This adventure story may be as exhausting for the readers as for the adventurers.
It’s hard to say which is the most appealing creation in this graphic novel.
The flying heli-phants have propellers on their backs. The high-four trees slap creatures’ palms. The main characters are nearly as interesting. Louie, the new kid in his town, was transformed into a skilled wrestler after he traveled through a magic portal. His hamster, Scooty, who came with him, has grown so large that he asks people to call him Bear. That’s one of the main rules of the Land of Anything Goes: You’re transformed into whatever you were thinking about when you arrived, which means one character has the head of a chicken. (Many characters are animals, but Louie and chicken-headed Cluck appear White; their friend Tooty has light-brown skin and turquoise hair.) Large sections of the story are so wonderfully strange that they’re nearly impossible to describe, but this being a fantasy, there’s a prophecy: Louie will save everyone from the villain. Unfortunately, the book is almost too imaginative. There are too many brawls, too many new creatures, and way too many poop jokes. Déjà vu sets in. But the toilet humor leads to a note of great wisdom. About the cacacapoop (which looks like a hilarious parody of the Jabberwock), Cluck says: “If you name something that’s really scary a funny name, it makes that thing less scary.”
This adventure story may be as exhausting for the readers as for the adventurers. (Graphic adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-22415-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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