Continued reliance on formula makes this third outing too much like the first two.
Set in the 1930s, this third book of the Curiosity House series continues to follow four orphans who are performers and residents of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum of Freaks, Oddities, and Wonders.
In the previous book, the orphans, Sam, Max, Thomas, and Pippa, only barely escaped capture by the mad scientist Nicholas Rattigan, who vanished after murdering Sam's parents. Under the protection of their new caretaker, Mr. Dumfrey, head of the museum, the children are rallying to move on from their grief when a mysterious string of robberies hits close to home. After someone poisons and kills all of Gen. Farnum's fleas from his world-famous flea circus, Farnum is arrested for murder. Knowing Farnum is incapable of such an act, and after the occurrence of a second murder while he's in jail, the orphans suspect that Rattigan may be lurking about yet again. These events lead the orphans to discover the tragic origins of their exceptional abilities, and they find themselves racing to uncover a deadly plot that could lead to the destruction of New York City. The plot is somewhat engaging in building suspense as the orphans attempt to unveil the hidden traitors, but the delivery of a dark reveal about the orphans is derailed by repetitive foreshadowing that establishes a predictable outcome. In the end, whimsy and a quick pace fail to compensate for the plot’s shortcomings.
Continued reliance on formula makes this third outing too much like the first two. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-227087-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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