Star-quality co-authors will (as with the previous episodes) ensure good sales, but the broad gap between the ingenuous...
George and his impulsive friend Annie, both white, take more trips into space to save the Earth from a madman with a supercomputer.
As in the Hawkings’ three previous books about George (George’s Secret Key to the Universe, 2012, etc.), the plot is a flimsy vehicle for a series of mind-expanding infodumps, either inserted into the narrative or interleaved in a (much) smaller font. As an outbreak of computer hacking plunges the world into riot and chaos—the work, it eventually turns out, of a particularly silly onesie-wearing villain with a quantum computer—George, Annie, and readers with sufficient attention spans are filled in on topics of radically varying density. These range from ciphers, algorithms, internet safety, and why the moon has a “dark side” to the operation of a “universal” Turing Machine, the present and future of robotics, 3-D printing, the habitability of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Boltzmann Brains, and DNA. Stephen Hawking closes with a long speculative essay on life elsewhere in the universe that includes his proposal, recently in the news, to send machines to other solar systems. Aside from Annie’s dyslexia, the authors make no effort to diversify the cast, nor does Parsons in his frequent cartoon vignettes.
Star-quality co-authors will (as with the previous episodes) ensure good sales, but the broad gap between the ingenuous storyline and challenging informational content will frustrate some young readers and bore the rest. (Informational science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6627-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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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