by Cornelia Funke ; translated by Anthea Bell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004
This solid adventure lacks the lusciousness of language and intricacy of plot that marked last year’s Inkheart, but it does...
When human development threatens the remote Scottish valley where the earth’s last remaining silver dragons have hidden, Firedrake, a determined young dragon, and his friend Sorrel, an irascible brownie, set out to find the Rim of Heaven, a remote Himalayan valley said to be the ancient home of the dragons.
In short order they pick up Ben, a stout-hearted orphan lad, and Twigleg, a homunculus in the joyless employ of Nettlebrand, the evil artificial golden dragon whose sole purpose in life is hunting and killing silver dragons. The twin imperatives to evade Nettlebrand and to find the Rim of Heaven form the engine that drives this narrative, and the importance of belief—in goodness, in possibility, in magic, in love—provides the fuel. Various secondary characters pop up to help or to hinder, genially straining credibility with the tidiness of plot-driven need.
This solid adventure lacks the lusciousness of language and intricacy of plot that marked last year’s Inkheart, but it does carry the reader along at breakneck pace, the inevitably victorious ending no less satisfying for all its predictability. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-45695-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 2014
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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by Neil Gaiman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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