Fast-paced action, a sympathetic main character and appealing alternate reality combine here for a kid-friendly introduction...
Young readers won't need to have read Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels to enjoy this fantasy about a contemporary kid who comes across a village of Lilliputians by accident.
Twelve-year-old Michael Pine suffers from a lack of imagination, and who could blame him? His uncle shows no interest in him except for his stipend for caring for the boy, the local gang presses him to complete an initiation by robbing a store and he doesn't otherwise see much hope for the future. That is, until he stumbles upon a tiny village in the backyard of the town eccentric, Lemuel Gulliver. Michael's struggles to cope with accusations (some false, some true), keep his job at a grocery store and avoid the gang become compounded by his taking the responsibility of protecting the Lilliputians. Swiftian satire isn't completely absent here (the Lilliputian community devolves into a useless war, while the people in Michael's world experience their own power struggles), but the focus is more on character development than political commentary. Michael is the one character everyone else in the story relies on (Mr. Fenn at the store, his uncle who needs the stipend, the Lilliputians and even the gang, whose members lack smarts), and it's satisfying when he comes into his own to save the little people, sticking up for himself in the process.
Fast-paced action, a sympathetic main character and appealing alternate reality combine here for a kid-friendly introduction to a classic. (Magical adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-24231-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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