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LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD

Name: LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD
Author: itbook

developed by itbook ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2013

Feature-rich and slickly designed and illustrated, this app is at once hilarious and disquieting.

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A Tim Burton–esque variation on the classic story, definitely not for the weak of heart.

Related in English or Spanish by a nonoptional narrator who is sometimes drowned out by the sound effects, the tale sends defunct Little Red, er, Dead—unaware that her basket holds poisoned pastries—through the woods to her still-living grandmother’s. Fortunately, Grandmother has been tipped off. Muttering that “they used to call me ‘Ramba’ when I was young,” she gathers enough heavy ordinance to invade North Korea (plus a tap-activated lightsaber) and greets her grandchild with a hail of gunfire. Unfortunately, Grandmother has a short memory and so dies histrionically after chowing down on the basket’s contents. This gothic knee-slapper alternates between text pages with line-drawn illustrations and elaborately crafted scenes featuring vanishing dialogue, spooky shadows and macabre interactive effects. Little Dead’s tendency to pop up suddenly in the foreground, flashing her fleshless grin and rolling her single eye, is particularly shriek-worthy. A hapless wolf named Lupito offers comic relief—plus, following a fall down Grandma’s chimney, a main course. A button on the title page links to sets of sketchbook pages and wipe-away scenes.

Feature-rich and slickly designed and illustrated, this app is at once hilarious and disquieting. (iPad storybook app. 9-13)

Pub Date: March 17, 2013

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: itbook

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013

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HOLES

by Louis Sachar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...

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Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).

Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5

Page Count: 233

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER

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by Louis Sachar ; illustrated by Tim Heitz

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FUZZY MUD
by Louis Sachar

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THE CARDTURNER
by Louis Sachar

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS AND THE TERRIFYING RETURN OF TIPPY TINKLETROUSERS

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CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS AND THE TERRIFYING RETURN OF TIPPY TINKLETROUSERS

From the Captain Underpants series , Vol. 9

by Dav Pilkey & illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 2012

Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.

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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)