Skates by without landing any impressive tricks.
When Geronimo Stilton must go undercover in a figure-skating competition to stop a thief, there’s just one little problem: He doesn’t know how to skate.
Everyone’s trying to guess who will win a special prize in the couples category of the Mouse Island Ice Skating Championships: Will it be Lobelia Tutu, or perhaps the mysterious Masked Skaters, or maybe Anastasia Goudanov, the great-great-great-niece of Olga Goudanov, whose legendary ice skates, gifted to her by Czar Mousoloff of Mousekow, are the contest’s prize? Amping the excitement is the possibility that the prize skates hold a clue to a hidden treasure. After Geronimo accidentally uncovers the identities of the Masked Skaters, they reveal they’re plants protecting the skates from a would-be thief. With their identities compromised, they need another investigator to step in and protect the prize—and they recruit Geronimo, despite his inability to skate. To get him ready, his friends and family recruit Lobelia to teach him so he’ll no longer be a “mozzarella” (rodent slang for rookie), and his love interest, Creepella von Cacklefur, steps in as his partner. Light, informational bits about skating bolster the plot until the competition, which is almost disastrous for Geronimo, though the resolution brings no surprises. With the hero’s distinctive personality and brightly colored text and illustrations, this book’s standard Stilton fare. Inconsistencies within the text do the series’ young enthusiasts a disservice.
Skates by without landing any impressive tricks. (Adventure. 6-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-30621-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A delightful, thoughtful escape to a magical world.
A mysterious hotel guest tells stories to a maid’s child.
It’s been a long time since the last letter arrived from Marta’s soldier father; without him, Marta and her mother have landed in the attic room of the Hotel Balzaar, where her mother works as a maid and Marta must be always unobtrusive. But when a flamboyant elderly countess with a parrot arrives, the new guest spots Marta right away and insists the child come to her room to hear stories. The stories enchant and frustrate Marta in equal turns, being both compelling and ending in places that leave her unsatisfied. But the stories also seem interconnected in ways that inspire Marta to examine them for deeper meaning. Pieces of the fablelike stories relate to Marta—especially to her father. Marta’s holding out in her belief that he will return to them one day, and she finds the more magical takes on reality offered by the countess’s stories reassuring in the face of her life’s ambiguities. Readers, too, will enjoy piecing together the connections among the stories and will be encouraged to seek deeper truths about people and the world around them. The vintage, baroque artwork features bold, confident lines that capture the timelessness of both Marta’s story and the countess’s tales. Characters present white.
A delightful, thoughtful escape to a magical world. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781536223316
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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