Santa Claus hates you and wants you to die. 364 days a year, he’s a tyrant who forces children to fight to the death in an...
It’s surprising that a book with zombies and talking celery isn’t quite goofy enough to work.
Santa Claus hates you and wants you to die. 364 days a year, he’s a tyrant who forces children to fight to the death in an enormous coliseum. Once a year, on Christmas Eve, he travels across the dimensions to Earth, where his entire personality transforms, and he becomes a jolly gift giver with a bag stuffed with candy canes. Pilot and Huxley have the bad luck to meet him on December 23rd. To get home on his world-hopping sleigh, they’ll need to defeat Bruto the giant elf and Rudolph, who’s armed with a rocket launcher. Luckily, Huxley has a bowl of noodles. All of this is very silly. It’s the Simpsons’ fault it doesn’t work. Kids who’ve grown up on Captain Underpants and Shrek and Family Guy will recognize the formula: Sarcastic comment, self-referential joke, ridiculous occurrence that our heroes take perfectly in stride. In spite of the familiar pacing, some of the jokes are right on target. PILOT: “But isn’t Limbo supposed to be like an empty, blank place where lost souls roam forever?” TALKING STRAWBERRY: “…It seemed like a waste of good real estate, so we all moved in.”Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-26845-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Kudos to this prehistoric Buzz Lightyear…long may he sail the spaceways.
The space-roving dinosaur and his scaly crew return at last for another awesome rescue mission.
Jam-packed with near disasters, death-defying feats, and gleefully melodramatic art, this latest adventure (over 10 long years since Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates!) sends the mighty spaceship Megatooth hurtling toward Pyros Prime, where a small band of research scientists is threatened by the imminent eruption of supervolcano Mount Bleak. To the oft-repeated chorus of “Could this be the end of Captain Raptor?” the doughty dino roars down to a rough landing, weathers attacks from both a humongous Cobrasaurus and a swooping Vulturous, crosses a lambent lake of lava to snatch the beleaguered scientists (meek mammals all), and rejoins his shipmates to rocket off in the nick of time, blasting through a shower of falling asteroids just as all Pyros Prime bursts apart in a titanic explosion. “Never a dull moment,” says he, as news of an unspecified catastrophe on distant Seti Beta Six sets the stage for a fresh set of epic exploits. “Onward to the stars!” In the squared-off, lavishly detailed scenes, outsized monsters and laser-wielding warriors in riveted body armor battle through murky landscapes and caverns lit from below by glowing lava.
Kudos to this prehistoric Buzz Lightyear…long may he sail the spaceways. (Graphic picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58089-809-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Get set for gags aplenty…and not just the visual sort.
A missing coffin isn’t the only mystery on Geronimo Stilton’s plate.
Moldy mozzarella! In the wake of a pretend (or perhaps real!) heist, a mystery-themed dinner at Creepella Cacklefur’s castle quickly devolves into a mad rush from one hidden clue to the next. This is punctuated by courses ranging from toad slime and kraken tentacles to mystery giblets on a stick, all dished up by guest chef Boffo Flambé. There are also encounters with werecanaries and a horde of howling werewolf slugs, not to mention moat slime, cave slime, and (perhaps worst of all) sloth snot sorbet for dessert. (Readers will sympathize with our hero’s reluctance to partake, a running gag throughout.) Alert readers will doubtless detect a theme, and Angleberger’s just the one to amplify it with big sequential panels both decked out in loud colors and packed with a rodent cartoon cast that is drawn with manic energy and, often, covered in gooey gloobs. “I had slime for dinner,” Geronimo Stilton laments. “Now slime is having me for dinner!” Based on an episode published in Italy but not in the U.S. and so new even to series fans on this side of the Atlantic, the latest graphic caper from the mild-mannered journalist/sleuth will slide off the shelves whenever a slightly scary tale or, for that matter, a general grossfest is in order.
Get set for gags aplenty…and not just the visual sort. (Graphic mystery. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-58735-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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