Adds up to a promising, challenging start.
Endowed with awesome powers thanks to an Arithmetic Meteor, three young friends work to defend the “math-centric city of Computropolis” from evil in this series kickoff.
First villains up: Null Void (and her “vile cohorts”), who snatch the newly invented Divmulti Ray—which allows users to multiply or divide anything—for their nefarious purposes. The Solvers—Leo, Shahi, and Moe—multiply their powers, calculate their way out of numerous pickles, and, bottom line, send their nemesis packing after cleverly foiling her schemes. Along the way, there are frequent pauses so that their sidekick Duncan (they also have a feline assistant, Rosy, who minds the Math Mansion when they’re out) can explain topics such as factors, skip-counting, and long division. Action takes a distant backseat to instruction here, but Chad depicts both clearly and puts Leo, Shahi, and Moe at the head of a cast notably diverse of species as well as race. Along with demonstrating that there are usually multiple ways of arriving at correct answers, he also repeatedly challenges the invidious notion that multiplication and division aren’t useful in daily real life. Leo, Duncan, and Null Void are light-skinned, Shahi is dark-skinned, and Moe is tan-skinned; Moe uses they/them pronouns.
Adds up to a promising, challenging start. (glossary, step-by-step explanation of long division) (Graphic superhero nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781523512065
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Readers will gobble this down and look for more, make no mythtake.
Promising myth-adventures aplenty, this kickoff episode introduces young Zeus, “a very special, yet clueless godboy.”
After 10-year-old Zeus is plucked from his childhood cave in Crete by armed “Cronies” of the Titan king, Cronus, he is rescued by harpies. He then finds himself in a Grecian temple where he acquires a lightning bolt with the general personality of a puppy and receives hints of his destiny from an Oracle with fogged eyeglasses. Recaptured and about to be eaten by Cronus, Zeus hurls the bolt down the Titan’s throat—causing the king to choke and then, thanks to an alert Crony’s Heimlich maneuver, to barf up several previously eaten Olympians. Spooning in numerous ingredients from the origin myth’s traditional versions, the veteran authors whip up a smooth confection, spiced with both gross bits and contemporary idiom (“ ‘Eew!’ a voice shrieked. ‘This is disgusting!’ ”) and well larded with full-page illustrations (not seen). One thorough washing later, off marches the now-cocky lad with new allies Poseidon and Hera, to rescue more Olympians in the next episode.
Readers will gobble this down and look for more, make no mythtake. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-5787-4
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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