Luzzatto cranks up the gross-o-meter for this tale of a resourceful fifth-grader who inadvertently sets a malicious alien shapechanger free on Earth. Sam comes home from school one day to find a box in his driveway, with a small tab and a “Do Not Open” sign. Who could resist? But suddenly he’s in the Principal’s office on another planet, being informed that, as he’s just sprung chronic ne’er-do-well Exeter Lar Junderpanz, a Buterian mutant from Detention, it’s up to him to rectify the situation. Sam returns to Earth to discover that Exeter has become his body double, taken up such revolting habits as picking his nose in public and brushing with zit cream, and worst of all, dedicated himself to making Sam miserable. The author plays out the comic possibilities expertly, tossing in a bully, a very adolescent big brother and school politics to complicate Sam’s life even further. He slips him an unexpected ally, too, and winds up the chase to a climactic face-off in (where else?) the Boys Locker Room. A champion candidate for reading aloud (good luck keeping a straight face), this zany escapade will leave young readers drooling for sequels. (Science fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-8234-1933-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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