With the jacket and a frontispiece by Edward Gorey, Bellairs' seventh book—about Johnny Dixon and the ever-cranky Professor Roderick Childermass—features a British villain who conjures up dark forces to advance his plans to take over the world. Professor Childermass learns that his brother Peregrine is dead, and with this news comes a riddle with a definite doomsday cast. Further, simply by spending the summer at his brother's Maine estate, the professor can inherit ten million dollars. He takes on the task, accompanied by his two young friends Johnny and Fergie—but none of them lasts the summer. An evil visitor to the estate, Mr. Stallybrass, who has in his possession a chess set of dwarflike pieces, uses black magic to foil the inheritance. He nearly succeeds in putting the deep freeze on the professor, Dr. Coote (an expert on magic and the occult), Johnny, and Fergie. Only a serendipitous meeting with an old witch who collects keys saves them—and the world as well. Only die-hard fans, enchanted by the previous books, will find solace and entertainment here. Incredible lapses of logic (the professor arrives at idea after idea without the least clue for readers as to his motives or his thinking processes) are shortcuts to longwinded passages that rush over crucial details and events. Formerly riveting characterizations have become, in this book, stock types. Thanks to the professor and Johnny, it's not the end of the world—but perhaps it should be the end of this formulaic series.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1989
ISBN: 161756348X
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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