Facing sneering peers, plus a cave full of vicious young dragons and two mountainous, malign adult ones, brings an ordinary Viking lad around to becoming a “Hero the Hard Way” in this farcical import. Dispatched to capture and train some breed of dragon as a rite of passage into the Hairy Hooligan Tribe, unprepossessing Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III returns not with a mighty Gronkle, or an aptly named Monstrous Nightmare, but a shrimpy creature laughingly dubbed “Toothless”—who also turns out to be about as trainable as a cat, with an attitude to match. But Hiccup and Toothless develop into a doughty team when two humongous, fire-breathing Sea Dragons pull up to shore, looking for the odd village or army to devour. Cowell adds lots of jagged, William Steig–like sketches to a narrative rich in dragon muck, cartoon violence, and characters with names like Snotlout and Dogsbreath the Duhbrain. Her genuinely fierce, intelligent, and scary dragons nearly steal the show, but Hiccup and his diminutive sidekick ultimately come out on top, both displaying a proper hero’s mix of quick wit, courage, and loyalty. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-73737-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sensitive, moving debut.
When 11-year-old Eric Harper begins caring for an injured unicorn, his life is changed by the choices he makes, the relationships he forms, and the secrets he uncovers.
Eric lives with his family on land that has belonged to Harpers for generations and shares a special bond with his grandmother. One day, Eric spies what he thinks is a white deer but quickly realizes is a white unicorn. Filled with the “most amazing feeling of comfort and happiness and excitement,” Eric follows the lame unicorn to the farmhouse his ailing grandmother recently sold to Dr. Brancusi, a veterinarian, and her daughter, Allegra. (All three characters appear to be white.) Dr. Brancusi senses Eric’s concern and asks him to help her treat the unicorn. Discovering the unicorn is pregnant with twins, Dr. Brancusi warns Eric they must keep her hidden until the babies are born and hires him to assist. Eric’s affinity to the unicorn deepens, and when she’s threatened and runs away, he frantically searches. In the end, although Eric experiences loss, he gains a special family connection. Despite the presence of supernatural creatures, Eric’s quiet, genuine, first-person voice tells a realistic story of family love and discovering one’s true self, the presence of the unicorn and other magical creatures adding just a touch of whimsy to a story about very real emotions, revealed in Green’s black-and-white illustrations.
A sensitive, moving debut. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-76112-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Hopping aboard the bandwagon behind its predecessor, Measle and the Wrathmonk (2004), this Brit-flavored burlesque pits young Measle Stubbs and his doughty little dog Tinker against a crew of wildly inept wrathmonks, or wizards-gone-to-the-bad, led by the last of the dragon-riding, long-ago-defeated Dragondons. Measle’s Mom being a rare reservoir of magical “mana,” the Dragodon has her snatched, intending to use her power to raise up his immense, dormant dragon and escape his underground prison. Pocketing some magic jellybeans, off hies Measle to the rescue, led by a convenient clue to a shutdown amusement park where drawn-out, increasingly large-scale chases and battles await, before the requisite escape and the dealing out of appropriate comeuppances. Thickly padded with repetitive slapstick scenes of the cardboard villains displaying their stupidity and explaining their intentions at length, this pedestrian knockoff makes stale reading next to the better imagined fantasies of Debi Gliori, Lemony Snicket, or just about anyone else. (Fantasy. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-058688-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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