Offers entertainment and will likely whet appetites for s’mores, but lacks clarity.
In this debut illustrated children’s book, a bad French fry causes trouble in a land of fun, delicious food.
In Fun Food Land, locals enjoy stopping by the Poutine Café, where French-E-Fry is owner and chef. Not only is the food great, it’s also free. The chef has Fry Friends who live under his protective hat (a beret, of course), who help him remember recipes and propose new ones. But one day, the chef tells Miss Cupcake about his suggestion for a new dessert: s’mores! The recipe starts with capturing some marshmallows when they aren’t looking, then melting them, drizzling them with chocolate, sandwiching them between graham crackers…and eating them. Horrified, Miss Cupcake hurries to warn Mr. and Mrs. Marshmallow, who panic and run, leaving a sticky trail behind. At the café, a regular called Pops discovers the truth: a rotten potato named Larry has somehow infiltrated the Fry Friends under the chef’s beret. Larry comes from a bad neighborhood, Junk Food Land, where the “unhappy packaged foods with bad attitudes live,” and he wants to plant “French-E-Fry’s head with many Fun Food Land residents as main ingredients!” Pops and Miss Cupcake come up with a cunning plan to foil Larry, and everyone celebrates at the end with marshmallow hugs and free poutine. The logic of Joelle’s and Beaupre’s tale doesn’t make much sense: how does the chef consist of being a container of fries, which are also independent beings? And if it’s horrifying to eat marshmallows, why not French fries, the main ingredient in poutine? Poutine (non-Canadian parents may need to explain the reference) is greasy-spoon fare. Residents of Fun Food Land include the Marshmallows, Miss Cupcake, Danny Donut, and Hamburger Harold, who hardly make a strong contrast to the denizens of Junk Food Land. And it’s a little odd to make s’mores, that campfire favorite, an object of horror. These difficulties aside, the book is amusing, with an exciting story of danger averted through cooperation, planning, and daring. Joelle’s illustrations are dynamic, colorful, and expressive, helping to tell the story.
Offers entertainment and will likely whet appetites for s’mores, but lacks clarity.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 28
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A spectacular return to a magical world.
Following the events of Impossible Creatures (2024), a devoted Guardian teams up with a brave princess to fight her power-hungry uncle and save the Archipelago’s dragons from a strange new threat.
Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle. Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. Dark-blond Anya (“five feet tall and all of it claws”) is a match for white-presenting Christopher, who, though he still misses Mal, finds that “it made a difference to have someone to move through the world with again. A friend changed the feel of the universe.” Mackenzie’s delicate, otherworldly art adorns the text.
A spectacular return to a magical world. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-15)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593809907
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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
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