This offers a few smiles and a laugh or two while readers wait for the sequel.
STEM camp is nerd heaven—until the aliens descend.
Kevin and his friends Ward, Tara and TJ have to find a way to win the Invention Convention at Northwest Horizons science camp if for no other reason than to beat Kevin’s nemesis, Alexander. Unfortunately, Alexander and his team, the Vainglorious Math Nerds, have built a working hovercraft. Kevin and his pals decide to build a galactascope, an interstellar communications device based on a comic book written by a man supposedly abducted by aliens…and it works! Responding to their summons, small, purple and furry Mim crashes into the camp lake. Can the friends keep Mim a secret until the Invention Convention? They’re pretty crafty, so probably. But when more aliens descend, can they trust that all their new friend has told them is fact? Kloepfer’s series kickoff is slow to start. It’s only after the aliens arrive that the story shows signs of life and only toward the end that the fun actually lifts this above run-of-the-mill go-to-camp tales. The sequel, set up in the last couple pages, might well be fun from the start, since the preliminaries are now out of the way. Final art not seen.
This offers a few smiles and a laugh or two while readers wait for the sequel. (Science fiction/humor. 8-11)Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-223101-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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