A serviceable charmer.
A preteen becomes a sorcerer’s apprentice.
Joey Kopecky, 13, is less than thrilled with his luck. After mysteriously acing a series of tests, the middling student is transferring to Exemplar Academy, an elite school that’s in session year-round. At his admission interview Joey is asked to take one final test, and the room around him vanishes. In its place is an old theater and a washed-up magician named Redondo the Magnificent. Through hurried exposition Joey learns that magic is real, but its power has been reduced in the modern world. Two ancient societies of magicians war over the remaining magic, and Joey has been chosen to turn the tide. The ensuing adventure story is well-paced and sprinkled with just enough humor and action to keep readers engaged, but the result, at 400 pages and counting, is a bit hollow. This series opener has an excellent sense of genre conventions but misses that special something, that little bit of thought that puts the title over the top. Instead it takes its place among a million Harry Potter and Percy Jackson riffs that will certainly scratch the itch in a pinch but won’t do well when it comes time to weed overfull bookshelves. The book adheres to the white default.
A serviceable charmer. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2487-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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