Bursting with literary references, this single-plot sequel incorporates familiar tales galore. Romantic Aurora, feisty/grumpy Storm and preternaturally verbal toddler Anything are enjoying domestic peace when wicked witch Belladonna hunts them down to eat Aurora’s heart and steal Storm’s magical pipe (a corrupting, all-powerful object constantly seeking its true owner, à la the One Ring). Archetypes weave through the plot (Snow White, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pandora’s Box, the Frog Prince, Red Riding Hood), while classic motifs pop up everywhere (wicked stepmother, magical talisman, three sisters). Allusions so subtle they might be nonexistent twinkle a playful presence (does that tavern invoke The Muppet Movie?). This has a looser weave than Into the Woods (2007), with its metaphysical rules inorganic and rushed. The sisters are frustratingly naïve, instantly believing news from unreliable sources that a loved one is dead, over and over again. However, the ending’s particularly nice, neither happily-ever-after nor not so, and the overall double-meta is delicious, with characters from the Grimms’ tales (and the Grimms themselves) and Greek myths both part of the sisters’ cultural landscape and elements in the story itself. Grey’s illustrations not seen. (Fantasy. 8-11)
Pub Date: April 13, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-75154-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of...
Trying to salvage failing grades, George and Harold use their handy 3-D Hypno Ring on termagant teacher Ms. Ribble—and succeed only in creating a supervillain with a medusa-like ’do and a yen to conquer the world with wedgie power.
Using a pair of robot sidekicks and plenty of spray starch, she even overcomes Captain Underpants. Is it curtains (or rather, wedgies) for all of us? Can the redoubtable fourth graders rescue the Waistband Warrior (a.k.a. Principal Krupp) and find a way to save the day? Well, duh. Not, of course, without an epic battle waged in low-budget Flip-O-Rama, plus no fewer than three homemade comics, including an “Origin of Captain Underpants” in which we learn that his home planet of Underpantyworld was destroyed by the . . . wait for it . . . “Starch Ship Enterprize.” As in the previous four episodes, neither the pace nor the funky humor (“Diapers and toilets and poop . . . oh my!”) lets up for a moment. Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of staleness. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-04999-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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