Awkward plotting and clichéd language hobble but don’t quite defeat the imaginative, engaging premise. (Steampunk. 9-12)
Steampunk with training wheels for the chapter-book set.
Set in 1902, this series opener features a dachshund narrator, Noodles, with a human companion, young Wally Kennewickett. Their home is the Automated Inn in Gasket Gully run by Wally’s parents, eccentric geniuses, and staffed by their inventions. In the first chapter, President Theodore Roosevelt turns up in hobo disguise seeking help to foil a plot by evil magicians to achieve world domination via hypnotism. After this spirited opening, blending familiar steampunk tropes (Nikola Tesla, the Ottoman Empire) with quirky original elements (demented pigeon fanciers, a genial conspiracy theorist), the plot stalls. Its villain is sidelined and unmet, while characters interact and Noodles fills in back story. The picture brightens whenever the inn’s mechanical staff is on hand. Gizmo supervises the housekeeping Dust Bunnies and shares cooking duties with Knives, whose many attachments “allow him to slice, dice, chop and puree at incredible speeds.” These appealing automated characters need more to do. Noodles, whose role as omniscient narrator stunts his character development, is similarly underutilized. (Let’s face it—dachshunds are wasted as straight men.) A surfeit of alliteration and arch dialogue amplifies missteps, but flashes of originality and sly humor, bolstered by nifty, gear-laden illustrations, keep the enterprise afloat.
Awkward plotting and clichéd language hobble but don’t quite defeat the imaginative, engaging premise. (Steampunk. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-90568-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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