This breezy re-envisioning will prime the younger set for the real thing
Iconic vamp-stamper Buffy gets a middle school makeover.
Reimagined as a preteen middle schooler, Buffy Summers and her newly divorced mother move from sunny California to cold and dreary Cleveland. Her new school, she quickly learns, is quite unusual. In this Buffy-verse, Cleveland is located on a Heckmouth (a tempered nod to the original Hellmouth) and is plagued with thirsty but not-too-bright vampires. School librarian Miss Sparks stuns Buffy when she divulges that she is a Watcher and that Buffy is a Slayer. Aided by new BFFs Alvaro and Sarafina, Buffy sets out to fight the mysterious and powerful Primum Dominum vampire before he makes snacks out of her classmates during a solar eclipse. With a light touch and a fast pace, this mix of fizzy journal entries, playful comics panels, and OMG-laden text messages is sure to please fans of both epistolary novels and vampire fare. Although Buffy stakes many vampires, the violence is nearly nonexistent, as the undead benignly evaporate into clouds of bats. Buffy’s problems are solidly of the middle-class suburban ilk: mean girls with designer handbags, oodles of preteen angst, and predictable classroom and cafeteria mishaps. With its illustrations rendered in grayscale, Buffy appears to be white, and her two best friends present with darker-toned skin, although their races are not overtly specified.
This breezy re-envisioning will prime the younger set for the real thing . (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-48023-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Classic action-packed, monster-fighting fun
It’s been 42 days since the Monster Apocalypse began, and 13-year-old Jack Sullivan, a self-proclaimed “zombie-fighting, monster-slaying tornado of cool” is on a quest to find and rescue his not-so-secret crush, June Del Toro, whether she needs it, wants it, or not.
Jack cobbles together an unlikely but endearing crew, including his scientist best friend, Quint Baker; Dirk Savage, Parker Middle School’s biggest bully; and a pet monster named Rover, to help him save the damsel in distress and complete the “ULTIMATE Feat of Apocalyptic Success.” Middle-grade readers, particularly boys, will find Jack’s pitch-perfect mix of humor, bravado, and self-professed geekiness impossible to resist. His sidekicks are equally entertaining, and it doesn’t hurt that there are also plenty of oozing, drooling, sharp-toothed monsters and zombies and a host of gizmos and gadgets to hook readers and keep them cheering with every turn of the page. Holgate’s illustrations play an integral role in the novel’s success. They not only bring Brallier’s characters to life, but also add depth and detail to the story, making plain just exactly how big Rover is and giving the lie to Jack’s “killer driving.” The marriage of text and illustration serves as a perfect example of what an illustrated novel can and should be.
Classic action-packed, monster-fighting fun (. (Graphic/horror hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-670-01661-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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