When 12-year-old Rufus Takada Collins finds an old train, it puts him in the midst of a magical, life-or-death scavenger hunt.
After a school year characterized by what he thinks of as a series of Fatal Errors, Rufus is looking forward to spending the summer with Grandpa Jack at Feylawn, the family property that encompasses forest, meadow, creek, and orchard. At Feylawn, Rufus finds an old-fashioned locomotive. Unfortunately, Grandpa Jack is hurt falling through rotting floorboards before he can learn about the train, and Rufus’ father bans Rufus from Feylawn. Rufus sneaks back and finds he can now see fairylike creatures called feylings. He discovers the train is the feylings’ only way home, and it’s been missing for years. With the help of his pretentious cousin, Rufus must decipher old clues to find the missing train parts. But this journey leads him to possibly the ultimate Fatal Error. With mischievous feylings, goblins, and magic, this is an exciting, fast-paced middle-grade fantasy. The characters’ experiences are also grounded in the real world: parental unemployment, divorce, friendship, familial bonds, growing up, family secrets, grief, and loss. Big lessons for readers and Rufus both are the importance of looking at the bigger picture and understanding how choices affect more than just ourselves. Both cousins are biracial; Rufus’ mother is of Japanese heritage, and his father is white, and Abigail’s father is Mexican, and her mother is white.
A delightful read for anyone who loves magic. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-30119-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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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. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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