This steampunk-ish tome—rife with Victorian bilge water and colossal squid gore—will best serve those who enjoyed the first.
After thwarting the supernaturally malevolent Bajamonte Tiepolo’s plan for Venice’s annihilation in The Undrowned Child (2011), Teodora and her friend Lorenzo again find themselves, and the city, targets of destruction.
The labyrinthine plot unfurls with Venice gripped by fresh terrors—an icy flood kills many, including Renzo’s mother; illness spreads; children disappear. Renzo is pressed onto the Scilla, a ship converted to shelter orphan boys; Teo, impersonating one, joins him. The resurgent Tiepolo’s allies include an exiled lord sailing from Australia to claim the dying Queen Victoria’s throne and the villainous Miss Uish. Impersonating the Queen’s emissary, Uish assumes command of the Scilla, sets sail for London, and turns her child crew into unwilling pirates en route. Lovric again produces teeming subplots and an elaborate typology of subhuman abettors of both evil and good. The titular Emporium figures incidentally, during the London convergence halfway through; that funereal marketplace hosts a crowd of gritty street kids who trade work for overnights in the coffins. While Teo’s adoptive parents (abducted scientists conscripted to design a submarine for Tiepolo) endow that escape vehicle with a fatal flaw, this picaresque stew ends with another voluminous sequel clearly telegraphed.
This steampunk-ish tome—rife with Victorian bilge water and colossal squid gore—will best serve those who enjoyed the first. (author’s note; “What’s Real and What’s Made Up?”) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-74000-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
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)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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