Cool ideas, good execution, mediocre text.
Readers are challenged to unlock the secrets of a haunted house, with the aid of a "magic glass."
"Open at your own risk!" declares a message on the inside cover of the book, just above an elegant envelope. As if this isn't spooky enough, a skeleton's arm wreathed in smoke points at the envelope from below. Inside the sealed envelope is a rectangle of plastic, 2" x 3 1/4" and 1/8" thick, bordered with a design featuring the sun and the moon. Illustrations and three pages of instructions explain how to use the lens; placing it over selected images in the book guides readers/sleuths, providing clues, code keys and answers. There are 10 two-page spreads, spooky tableaux in mostly dark hues, nicely designed by Junko Miyakoshi. These include a Ouija board; a desk with old books, a candelabra, a skull and three crystal balls (readers choose their own fates from among them); a graveyard; mystery journals; even the gates of Hades. Instructions are in verse, each about a dozen lines per spread. Some are solid enough ("The dead it seems are quite alive / Buzzing in their graveyard hive"), but most are awkward near-rhymes ("Now that you have found your ghosts / It's time to look for UFO's"). The book ends with an answer key. And a bonus! A website (TheSpiritGlass.com) with 13 more puzzles.
Cool ideas, good execution, mediocre text. (Puzzle book. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-934734-49-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Seven Footer Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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