Wallace is just treading water in this roughed-out reprise of The Trouble with Miss Switch (1971) and Miss Switch to the Rescue (1981). Once again, evil witch Saturna has nefarious plans for science whiz Rupert P. Brown and his Pepperdine Elementary classmates. This time she places her vacuous but supernally handsome brother Grodark and Neptuna, another witch, into the Principal’s office—but, as usual, irascible rival Sabbatina Switch is on the case, and the baddies find all of their spells fizzling as soon as cast. Shoehorning computers and email into the tale without much understanding of how they actually work, the author concocts a series of situations involving talking pets, midnight classroom meetings, obscure clues in bad verse and quick, thousand-mile broom rides. But even readers willing to enjoy these crowd-pleasing elements without minding their contrivance are likely to be disappointed to see Rupert and friends doing little here beyond watching from the sidelines, worrying, and being briefly victimized by harmlessly prankish spells. A clumsy updating. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: June 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-84376-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Scieszka and Lane’s intrepid heroes of The Time Warp Trio are once again up to their necks in very silly historical circumstances. Joe, Fred, and Sam are horsing around during their school play—which they wrote themselves—about the ancient deities of Greece. When a cardboard thunderbolt accidently hits the magic blue book stashed in Joe’s backpack, the three boys are transported back to ancient Greece—or so they think. When they meet some of the wisecracking gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus, they realize they’ve been transported to the fictionalized Greece of their play, complete with dialogue they wrote using “The Book of Snappy Insults.” While flinging around backhanded compliments with Hera (who’s not bad on the uptake), the three time travelers try to locate their blue book of magic so they can return home. Instead, they end up as that night’s entertainment for the gods. The opening jokes fall flat, but then Joe comes up with some last-minute parlor tricks. Just when everything’s going well, a pack of Greek monsters arrives, and the mountain top threatens to become a battlefield. The wordplay is still fast and funny, and fans of the series will not mind that the deities have become sort of stock types; the abundance of goofy Groucho Marx-style zingers will keep everyone else smiling. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88596-7
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In a third book that links the imagination of a small child with the toy vehicles in his possession, S°s (Trucks, Trucks, Trucks, p. 538, etc.) puts realistic scenes of a child on the lefthand pages, and the scenes the child envisions on right. On one page, a boy sits on a sofa with a couple of boxes and a couple of poles and a small blanket. A blue scatter rug is on the floor. Opposite that scene is the same boy, but now the sofa is in a state of transformation. Gradually, through the pages, it is first an amorphous conveyance, then an inflatable, a canoe, a sailboat, a junk, until it becomes a great liner. The little rug, of course, becomes the sea. The pages march correspondingly along, with the boy arranging the boxes and poles into his vessel of choice. A fold-out page reveals a terrific sea monster, but a mother appears, too, with her vacuum cleaner, bringing boy and readers back to shore. S°s is at his simple best, using broad lines to depict reality, and then the spidery, dot-dash penwork to shape his fantasy world; he and children speak the same language to weave their dreams. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16644-X
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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