A solid base buried beneath a heaping helping of horse apples.
A young fanboy learns that his heroes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when he joins Perseus and other Argonauts on a quest for the Golden Sheep.
A fixation on the “horse apples”—what the narrator calls “my adorable nickname for horse poops”—of winged Pegasus isn’t all that drags down this effort at role reversal. Pruett sends white-presenting 12-year-old Gyro, who’s been named an “Honorary Indemnified Argonaut,” off with Heracles—here a brawny (and dimwitted) woman with disgusting personal habits—and chiseled narcissist Perseus on a mission to slay monsters and rescue a magical ram. But in contrast to these supposed heroes, all the monsters Gyro encounters, from Medusa and the Minotaur to the Cyclops, turn out to be victims of fake news spread by lying storytellers, and more interested in leading quiet lives than eating people. Along with being a miasma of labored fart jokes and potty humor, the narrative is studded with words like LΛBΨ℞ΦΠTH and TΩDΔΨ that inconsistently use letters misappropriated from the Greek alphabet. Improbably surviving multiple tricks and betrayals by his supposed allies, Gyro does ultimately get from “monster-fighter” to “monster-friender” in time for a climactic (and nearly bloodless) battle that leaves him “better than a hero.” Confusingly, in several first-person interludes that directly address readers, the narrator is a self-described “third-person omniscient narrator” but doesn’t define the term or clarify that it refers to the rest of the book.
A solid base buried beneath a heaping helping of horse apples. (author’s note, glossary, story notes) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781524886417
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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