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THE BOY WHO CLIMBED INTO THE MOON

Roald Dahl meets Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in this delightfully improbable tale in which a previously unimaginative English boy named Paul surprises himself by declaring that the moon’s just a hole in the sky. Paul, who gets more inventive by the day, meets a cast of eccentric characters who eventually help him stretch a ladder to the moon from the roof of his 29-story apartment building. Ah ha! It is just a luminous receptacle, stuffed with errant projectiles that have inadvertently landed within: human cannonballs, pilots, airships, “anti-missile-missile missiles” and even pterodactyls. The language, reminiscent of The BFG, is a kick: The sky is “fizzy” and “flappy,” bombers are “lovely” but also “doomy.” While themes of loneliness, grief and the absurdity of war are explored, the tone is light (“Sausages are better than war!”), the dialogue snappy, the story fast-paced and satisfying. Madmen are heroes and crackpots are geniuses in this charmingly over-the-top read-aloud that challenges readers to imagine the impossible. Dunbar’s abundant full-color illustrations perfectly capture the beautiful barminess of it all. (Fable. 8-11)

Pub Date: April 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-7636-4217-4

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010

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TUCK EVERLASTING

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. 

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." (Fantasy. 9-11)

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

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TALES OF A FIFTH-GRADE KNIGHT

A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.

Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.

Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.

A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Capstone Young Readers

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015

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