A pleaser for Wimpy Kid fans as well as any students who find the last few minutes before the bell rings an eternity.
The discovery that time actually does move more slowly in the back of a classroom than in the front puts a trio of amateur sleuths on the trail of even more startling revelations.
It looks like the Exploration-Mystery-Unbelievable Club’s search for a new mystery to investigate is going nowhere, until school starts and club president Stuart’s complaint that the afternoons really seem to drag leads to a surreptitious experiment with an astonishing result. As it turns out, the maintenance closet adjacent to the back wall is a time portal, and new custodian Mr. Hartoonian is a traveler sent from the future to prevent an upcoming world war. Unfortunately, the club’s interference not only derails his mission, but leaves him stranded in this era with a broken time machine. Even with help from Stuart’s dog, Ferdinand, who is, as readers of Alien Invasion in My Backyard (2015) will know, an alien robot, getting said mission back on track and saving the Earth (once again) isn’t going to be easy. Bolling casts his officious narrator as a legend in his own mind, surrounds him with smarter allies, trucks in a particularly lamebrain bully, and presents the headlong caper as a hand-lettered “official report” on graph paper with taped-in cartoon “photographs.” An appendix offers basic information about actual emus and briefly outlines the “butterfly effect.”
A pleaser for Wimpy Kid fans as well as any students who find the last few minutes before the bell rings an eternity. (Graphic/hybrid mystery. 8-10)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4494-5710-5
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who...
This much-abridged recreation of the famous tale by Hans Christian Andersen is smoothly told, following the original structure of seven short chapters, while leaving out numerous details and the Christian elements of the original.
Characters (a wolf) and incidents (a final confrontation between Gerda and the Snow Queen) have been added. Because of the elision and truncation of incidents from the original story, Gerda’s quest is less immediate and heart wrenching, and the motivations of many of the characters she meets are harder to understand. For example, it is not clear that the old woman with the magical garden tries to keep Gerda with her because she has always longed for a daughter, nor is the precarious situation of the outlaw’s daughter, who, in the original, sleeps with a knife at her side, apparent. The sophisticated, surreal and dreamlike illustrations created through mixed media, including manipulated photographs of dolls, flowers and paper constructions, often charmingly spill over onto the pages of text.
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who might be encouraged by this simple retelling to seek fuller versions of the tale. (Fairy tale. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84686-662-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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