In this agenda-heavy but comic tale, a lad brings peace between a pirate crew and the town it terrorizes by combining culinary wizardry and an inability to say anything that’s not nice. As years of depredation have turned everyone else in the village rude and sour, Horrendo, having had a Charming Spell laid on him at birth by the local Wise Woman, has always stood out for his total inability to criticize. Just as pirates are swooping down to kidnap all the 12-year-old boys, as they do every year, that same Wise Woman gives Horrendo a small box of powder that, she claims, will bring out the magic in any food. So it proves to be: in no time, Horrendo has tamed all of the crude, violent pirates except their brutal Captain with daily feasts of lobster Mornay and other yummy dishes. As soon as he sees how his crew has been turned, the outraged Captain forces Horrendo to walk the plank; however, extolling the benefits of teamwork and cooperation, Horrendo swiftly engineers an escape for himself and his fellow kidnappees. Strewing the dialogue with colorful invective—“ ‘You greasy ball of frog spawn, you burst boil on the back of the neck, you smelly sock left under the bed to rot . . . ’ ”—and granting the cast equally colorful names, like Scabrous and Rascal, Fienberg unites pirates (minus the Captain, who despite plenty of fighting and bloodshed, is the tale’s only casualty) and villagers in the end in a plan to build a tavern for Horrendo to cook in, and a school where the children can “ ‘get to have real books and colored pencils and educational conversations.’ ” The Lessons are hammered home, but the farce that delivers them is witty enough to keep readers thoroughly amused. The occasional illustrations are oddly dim, but provide appropriate caricatures. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2002
ISBN: 1-55037-773-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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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