Highly entertaining.
The road to superhero success is paved with collaboration challenges for a pair of middle schoolers in this series opener.
Aspiring comic book writer Eliot Quigly is not an artist—or at least not one who can draw the kind of art he needs. His eye fixed firmly on fame and fortune, he’s thrilled when he comes up with a hero whose super-strength comes from eating radioactive onion rings. So convinced is Eliot of the great potential of this idea that he persuades talented classmate Pamela Jones to draw the first episode. Though Eliot’s unselfconscious enthusiasm and unchecked confidence in his own genius are annoying and get him in trouble, the first installment of The Mighty Onion is championed by Pam and Eliot’s teacher and wins them followers and fan mail. Eliot soon runs afoul of his illustrator, however, since he fails to yield any artistic ground to Pam in storylines, dialogue, or anything else. His bumpy journeys to understanding his calling as a writer as well as grasping the elements of a sincere apology are convincing and very funny. Collage elements—crumpled drawings, torn pieces of paper, inspirational stickers, and a couple of fortune cookies—add energetic visual interest to this hybrid graphic novel/notebook narrative. Main characters read white; Dr. Hubris, the green-skinned, goblinlike supervillain of Eliot and Pam’s comics, inexplicably sports a Nehru jacket and topi.
Highly entertaining. (Graphic fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780316490313
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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
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