Fun and friendship combine for a satisfying sequel.
Following on My Dog Is Better than Your Dog (2015), this second in the CrimeBiters! series finds crime-fighting vampire dog Abby going to obedience school.
Eleven-year old Jimmy, white president and founder of the CrimeBiters club, seems to be falling out with his best friend, Irwin, a black boy, over fellow club member Daisy, the white girl whom both like. Jimmy has befriended former bully Baxter, a white boy and a new club member, and joins the local lacrosse team with him. Irwin resents the time Jimmy spends playing lacrosse, but Jimmy has become a good goalie and even begins skipping club meetings. Troublingly, lacrosse team members begin to experience too-frequent injuries, leading Jimmy to wonder if something’s afoot. Meanwhile, Abby chews up one too many of his mom’s shoes, and she might make Jimmy take Abby back to the shelter. To save Abby, Jimmy takes her to obedience class, where she becomes all too docile for Jimmy’s taste. Is she no longer a crime-fighting vampire dog? The two storylines merge when Abby helps to solve the injury mystery. Greenwald focuses far more attention on Jimmy’s precarious social life than on Abby this time, although he includes enough dog action to justify the book’s title. The gentle lesson on how friendship should endure even when something interferes is leavened with humor generated by the return of Jimmy’s nemesis from the previous book, Mrs. Cragg.
Fun and friendship combine for a satisfying sequel. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-78397-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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