Spindly the plotline may be, but it’s greened up with a few yuks and rises from an unusually fertile series premise.
The discovery of a detailed journal kept by his patchwork dad’s creator prompts a child with mismatched parts of his own to start tracking down his many “cousins.”
Only just found in the box in which 14-year-old J.D. (for John Doe) had been left as an infant at Mr. Shelley’s Orphanage for Lost and Neglected Children®, Dr. Frankenstein’s notebook not only clues the boy in to his parentage (or at least his father’s identity), but provides tantalizing leads to the original owners of dad’s components. As J.D. has inherited eyes of different colors and hands and feet of different sizes, he figures that he’s related to said owners—and so sets out to find them or, more likely, their descendants. His search acquires particular urgency thanks to Dr. Frankenstein’s amoral daughter, Frances Kenstein, who is likewise on a quest to recreate her father’s magnum opus using body parts with the same DNA. Repetitively noting how “cute” she is and uttering “Don’t panic,” and “I’ll figure something out” with mantralike frequency, J.D. rescues an explorer in Antarctica and a would-be young police detective in LA from his acquisitive rival in this two-episode opener. Though occasionally given to clumsy turns of phrase, his narrative is stocked with jokes, blotches, gross bits, typeface changes, side notations, sketched vignettes and color illustrations.
Spindly the plotline may be, but it’s greened up with a few yuks and rises from an unusually fertile series premise. (Light fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4342-9130-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Readers will gobble this down and look for more, make no mythtake.
Promising myth-adventures aplenty, this kickoff episode introduces young Zeus, “a very special, yet clueless godboy.”
After 10-year-old Zeus is plucked from his childhood cave in Crete by armed “Cronies” of the Titan king, Cronus, he is rescued by harpies. He then finds himself in a Grecian temple where he acquires a lightning bolt with the general personality of a puppy and receives hints of his destiny from an Oracle with fogged eyeglasses. Recaptured and about to be eaten by Cronus, Zeus hurls the bolt down the Titan’s throat—causing the king to choke and then, thanks to an alert Crony’s Heimlich maneuver, to barf up several previously eaten Olympians. Spooning in numerous ingredients from the origin myth’s traditional versions, the veteran authors whip up a smooth confection, spiced with both gross bits and contemporary idiom (“ ‘Eew!’ a voice shrieked. ‘This is disgusting!’ ”) and well larded with full-page illustrations (not seen). One thorough washing later, off marches the now-cocky lad with new allies Poseidon and Hera, to rescue more Olympians in the next episode.
Readers will gobble this down and look for more, make no mythtake. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-5787-4
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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