Funny sci-fi and comic-book adventures rolled into one heavily illustrated novel.
Two best friends find their lives transformed when they meet a time-traveling T. rex.
Fearful Tim Sullivan couldn’t be more different than adventurous Tito Delgado. When Oskar’s Transtemporal Theropod Transporter 3.0 lands in Tim’s backyard, Tito befriends the talking dinosaur, but Tim is much warier. Things keep happening that prove him right. First Tim drinks all the IMPOSSIBLE JUICE™ and then finds out it was the only fuel source onboard. Now Oskar is stuck in the present and cannot travel back to his own time. The juice gives Tim a superpower that brings his worries to life, but he won’t understand that for a while. Oskar quickly absorbs human knowledge via the internet and then produces SARA, “the nicest, smartest, and most powerful virtual assistant ever created.” Little does he know that SARA will turn evil and begin a series of battles with her creator and the two friends that will involve poop, giant “flying duck-shaped robots,” a honey badger, and Tim’s finally discovered superpower. This over-the-top humorous fantasy mashes up technology (even including a chart of the binary code for each letter of the alphabet, with a coded message for readers to decipher), comic-book tropes, weird animals, and scatological humor, with cartoon-style digital illustrations on almost every page that will keep readers poring over the details. Latine Tito inserts occasional Spanish phrases into his dialogue; Tim and most other human characters read as White.
Funny sci-fi and comic-book adventures rolled into one heavily illustrated novel. (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9269-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to...
A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee.
Bond begins briskly—within the first 10 pages, barn cat Burdock has overheard Dewey Baxter’s nefarious plan, and by Page 17, all of the farm animals have been introduced and Burdock is sharing the terrifying news. Grady, Dewey’s (ever-so-slightly) more principled brother, refuses to go along, but instead of standing his ground, he simply disappears. This leaves the animals to fend for themselves. They do so by relying on their individual strengths and one another. Their talents and personalities match their species, bringing an element of realism to balance the fantasy elements. However, nothing can truly compensate for the bland horror of the premise. Not the growing sense of family among the animals, the serendipitous intervention of an unknown inhabitant of the barn, nor the convenient discovery of an alternate home. Meanwhile, Bond’s black-and-white drawings, justly compared to those of Garth Williams, amplify the sense of dissonance. Charming vignettes and single- and double-page illustrations create a pastoral world into which the threat of large-scale violence comes as a shock.
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to ponder the awkward coincidences that propel the plot. (Animal fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-33217-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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