A witty acknowledgment that sometimes it feels good to be bad.
A series of kitchen mishaps radicalize a grudge-holding shroom.
The story opens in media res, with an expressive button mushroom plummeting into a whirring blender toward certain death. Cue the record scratch—you’re probably wondering how this fungus fell from grace—and we flash back to rosier times. It’s pizza night, and the fridge teems with animated veggies grinning nervously as they await selection. But when pineapple makes the final cut and strips the mushroom of his pizza-star status, the culinary slight ignites a descent into madness that endures all the way to the compost heap. Dubbing himself the Mushroom of Doom, he assembles an army of fungi amenable to exacting revenge. Readers won’t be shocked when Doom’s tyranny extends to the treatment of his goon squad, but they may be surprised when even the selflessness of a brave former fridgemate isn’t enough to inspire a return to the straight and narrow. Delightful visual details—particularly Doom’s transformation into not-so-fun-guy—complement a narrative structured like a graphic novel and a text jam-packed with groan-worthy puns. While the inciting incidents feel a little scattered, on the whole, the pleasing narrative invokes familiar themes, sitting somewhere at the intersection of Aaron Blabey’s Bad Guys series and Jory John and Pete Oswald’s Food Group collection. Its subversive conclusion, too, offers a fun twist on the redemption arc some readers have come to expect.
A witty acknowledgment that sometimes it feels good to be bad. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781454961192
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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