Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds.
Pranksters George and Harold face the deadliest challenge of their checkered careers: a supersmart, superstrong gym teacher.
With the avowed aim of enticing an audience of “grouchy old people” to the Waistband Warrior’s latest exploit, Pilkey promises “references to health care, gardening, Bob Evans restaurants, hard candies, FOX News, and gentle-yet-effective laxatives.” He delivers, too. But lest fans of the Hanes-clad hero fret, he also stirs in plenty of fart jokes, brain-melting puns, and Flip-O-Rama throwdowns. After a meteorite transforms Mr. Meaner into a mad genius (evil, of course, because “as everyone knows, most gym teachers are inherently evil”) and he concocts a brown gas that turns children into blindly obedient homework machines, George and Harold travel into the future to enlist aid from their presumably immune adult selves. Temporarily leaving mates and children (of diverse sexes, both) behind, Old George and Old Harold come to the rescue. But Meaner has a robot suit (of course he has a robot suit), and he not only beats down the oldsters, but is only fazed for a moment when Capt. Underpants himself comes to deliver a kick to the crotch. Fortunately, gym teachers, “like toddlers,” will put anything in their mouths—so an ingestion of soda pop and Mentos at last spells doom, or more accurately: “CHeffGoal-D’BLOOOM!”
Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-50492-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Brains trump brawn every time—at least for this horn-helmed peacemaker.
Being some of the exploits of Thorfinn the Very-Very-Nice-Indeed.
Being clever as well as unfailingly polite, Thorfinn—youngest son of Harald the Skull-Splitter and best friends with axe-wielding Velda the, er, girl—not only recovers a stolen treasure (which he then donates to the Mangy Elks Protection League), but saves his village and all of Norway from an unscrupulous Viking chief. Morgan’s loosely drawn ink-and-wash cartoons add appropriately comical notes, as does the dialogue (“Oh, don’t be such a drama queen,” sighs the bad guy to the apoplectic Harald) and occasional outsized belch. In the co-published Thorfinn the Nicest Viking and the Raging Raiders, the mannerly marauder leads an expedition to “rescue” his mother from an Icelandic spa while getting to the bottom, as it were, of a shocking atrocity: “What kind of sick, twisted person would burn another Viking’s underpants!?” Readers may want to know, too. Each adventure closes with a game or puzzle or some bits of Viking lore, plus a sheet of detachable trading cards. Unsurprisingly, the characters all appear to be white.
Brains trump brawn every time—at least for this horn-helmed peacemaker. (Historical farce. 8-10)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78250-235-7
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Floris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
A cosmic misfire.
Kelvin Klosmo goes to the wacky Sci-Fi Junior High.
Kelvin has moved to a new intergalactic space station so that his genius parents can continue their important research. Kelvin is nervous about attending a new school. Everyone expects the product of two geniuses to be twice as smart, but Kelvin’s brains haven’t quite snapped into place just yet. The white human boy’s classmates are a diverse crew of extraterrestrial life forms amusingly brought to life in Martin’s comic panels. (The book’s intraspecies diversity is not as rich as what’s found in many other middle-grade sci-fi books, such as Stuart Gibbs’ Moon Base Alpha series.) The book unfurls per middle school drama formula: there’s an annoying principal, weird kids, and a pretty (nonhuman) girl, but absent is the character work that makes such James Patterson outings as Jacky Ha-Ha (with co-author Chris Grabenstein, 2016) or Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life (with co-author Chris Tibbetts, 2011) stand apart. This installment in Patterson’s empire does not have that magic. Kelvin, his family, and his friends seem to have little interior life, and a subplot involving a nefarious ne’er-do-well goes nowhere. Echoes of comic books, Star Wars, and 1950s sci-fi classics resound, but their influence is not enough to make the book come alive.
A cosmic misfire. (Science fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-31516-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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