A faithful—but not slavishly so—adaptation worthy of the Big Apple.
Even more ambitious than its predecessor, Alice for the iPad, a mash-up that could have gone terribly wrong finds its own magical charm.
Following in the finger-steps of what was considered one of the first great children's story apps for the iPad, Atomic Antelope's next outing could have been a straightforward adaptation of Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Instead the development studio has grafted the book's scenes neatly onto New York City. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are taxi drivers, the Red Queen is a colorful Statue of Liberty and the English countryside is replaced by an Empire State Building Observation Deck view of the city. If it sounds tacky (as the blaring soundtrack and blinking neon signage of the cover page suggest it to be), the careful mix of Carroll's original text—with only minor updates to adjust the setting—and the stunning adaptations of Sir John Tenniel's well-known illustrations will soon reassure readers. As with the previous app, the 26 animated, interactive pages are the show-stoppers; characters and objects wobble, sway or get tossed around based on touch. Incidental music and sound effects are evocative (the "Coney Island" page, for instance, is impressively immersive). Some of the marriage of text to setting seems almost too good to be true ("I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!" Alice says of New York City's grid), but purists will appreciate how much of Carroll's prose and poems are left intact.
A faithful—but not slavishly so—adaptation worthy of the Big Apple. (iPad storybook app. 5 & up)Pub Date: March 7, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Atomic Antelope
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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 epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
