A quirky existential adventure for thoughtful readers.
Faced with sudden life changes, a boy blindly rushes into a deserted construction site and falls into a hole.
Danny comes home from school one day to discover that his parents have boxed up all his possessions, given his dog Thwack away and are separating to pursue their artistic dreams. Understandably infected with a “terrible energy” that sends him pelting down the street, he is too distracted to watch his step. As a result, he finds himself at the bottom of a steep-walled pit, with no cellphone service and only the contents of his backpack for supplies. Being generally a levelheaded sort (“His parents always said he was practical, as if it were some kind of defect”), he takes inventory, does his homework, turns a garbage bag into a shelter—and, along with thinking his own thoughts, has some therapeutic interchanges with a chatty mole and a treacherous snake. Rescued the next day, he emerges to what seems a bright, new world, and though his repentant parents have put everything back the way it was, he lets them know that it’s OK to move on. Despite the talking animals, it’s more Robinson Crusoe than Alice in Wonderland, with comical dialogue and occasional cartoon illustrations lightening the emotional load.
A quirky existential adventure for thoughtful readers. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55498-311-7
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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Chucklebait for Wimpy Kid fans.
Bullies spur a lad and two new friends to dress up as secret superheroes in this trilogy opener from Norway.
Encouraged by the spectral figure of his just-deceased grandpa, Rusty sets out for payback after three punks—identified throughout as “Anton, Ruben, and the minister’s son”—wreck the clubhouse he and his friend Jack have laboriously constructed from scrap. As “Brown,” dressed in a brown cape and mask, he sneaks out into the night to slap brown paint on Ruben’s bicycle. Shortly after Rusty tells Jack about the feat, another masked marauder, “Black,” repaints Anton’s bike. Joined by a third confidante, styling herself “Blue, or the Blue Avenger,” the trio sets out on one more nocturnal mission…only to discover that most of the stash of blue paint has disappeared. Still, there’s enough to repaint the bikes of all three foes blue. The next day Rusty, overcome by guilt, is on the verge of confessing…when he learns that his nemeses are now in deep doo-doo for several acts of mischief, notably splashing the local church’s spire with blue “rude words.” Off the hook! Small, fine-lined ink drawings with color highlights on nearly every page supply this tongue-in-cheek escapade with evocative vignettes depicting Rusty’s flights of fancy, quizzical-looking parents and other grown-ups, and masked prowlers in homemade outfits. The cast defaults to white.
Chucklebait for Wimpy Kid fans. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59270-212-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Begins with a premise that doesn’t bear examination and goes badly off the rails toward the end: skip.
Where have all the grown-ups gone, and why? Lucy finds the answers under her bed.
Suddenly left to their own devices, the children of Whiffington Town quickly devolve into a bewildered mob—except for 11-year-old Lucy Dungston. Unwillingly finding herself cast in the role of “the girl who knows what to do,” she determines to find out “what the jiggins is going on.” As it turns out, the garbage-loving, under-the-bed Creakers have bundled the adults off to the mysterious realm of Woleb to stop them from sending their lovely rubbish away to distant landfills. True to the spirit of his Dinosaur That Pooped a Planet (2017) and its sequels, Fletcher goes for the grotty, sending his doughty protagonist through slimy tunnels bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to alimentary tubes, past shops offering such delicacies as earwax ice cream, to a tavern where favored patrons get “extra snot drops” in their slops. From there the tale takes a distasteful white-savior turn: Lucy realizes that despite their nonstandard English and slovenly habits, Creakers have needs and children too, so she arranges to give them the moldering contents of the town dump. Devries’ playful illustrations feature wide-eyed humans (all white except for one 6-year-old brown-skinned diva with “bouncy hair” and her father) in expressive poses and stubby, comically ugly monsters.
Begins with a premise that doesn’t bear examination and goes badly off the rails toward the end: skip. (map) (Farce. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-7334-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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