Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of...
Trying to salvage failing grades, George and Harold use their handy 3-D Hypno Ring on termagant teacher Ms. Ribble—and succeed only in creating a supervillain with a medusa-like ’do and a yen to conquer the world with wedgie power.
Using a pair of robot sidekicks and plenty of spray starch, she even overcomes Captain Underpants. Is it curtains (or rather, wedgies) for all of us? Can the redoubtable fourth graders rescue the Waistband Warrior (a.k.a. Principal Krupp) and find a way to save the day? Well, duh. Not, of course, without an epic battle waged in low-budget Flip-O-Rama, plus no fewer than three homemade comics, including an “Origin of Captain Underpants” in which we learn that his home planet of Underpantyworld was destroyed by the . . . wait for it . . . “Starch Ship Enterprize.” As in the previous four episodes, neither the pace nor the funky humor (“Diapers and toilets and poop . . . oh my!”) lets up for a moment. Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of staleness. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-04999-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
On pages designed to look as if they come from a grubby notebook, an eight-year-old explorer records and illustrates fantastical adventures that start (and perhaps stay, to judge from internal hints) in his own backyard. In headlong fashion, Charlie finds himself struck by lightning, barreling down a swollen stream, wrestling a crocodile and then riding a steam-powered mechanical rhino (diagram included) into a fight with a huge serpent. Subsequently captured by a gorilla who takes him as a pet to a city of silverbacks, he proceeds to learn their speech (including 50 different words for “banana”), to become their king and to save them from an invading horde of mandrills. Eventually he slips away, only to find himself literally hurled into a new set of simultaneously published escapades with the female Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy ($5.99, ISBN: 978-0-385-75137-7; PLB: $11.99, ISBN: 978-0-385-75138-9). Charlie inserts plenty of quick sketches, maps and even the odd eyeball or other artifact to prove that it’s all true—not that readers would ever doubt. Whether he’ll get back home in time for tea is anybody’s guess. (Fantasy. 8-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-84970-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
In this nearly all-dialogue series-opener, a quintet of young superheroes with unusually kidlike powers squares off against a noise-hating mad scientist. Despite continual efforts to keep it down, Daniel is cursed with such loud pipes that no window or water glass is safe in his presence. This earns him a quick detention in his new school, where he meets three fellow fifth-graders with their own exaggerated abilities to annoy: Rex Rodriguez instantly breaks anything he touches; Violet Fitz can produce world-class tantrums; and Sid Down raises hyperactivity to high art. As it turns out, all four were test subjects as newborns, exposed to a defective “Behavio-Ray” that was supposed to make them permanently docile but had the opposite effect. Now the ray’s developer, Otis “Old Fogey” Fogelman, is back with an improved product, and plans to try it out on the entire planet—starting with his first batch of failures. Joined by Daniel’s babbling little sister Jeannie S. (who lives up to her name), the young folk do brisk battle in brightly colored, easy-to-“read” cartoon frames, win a victory and by the end have not only cool new names like “Tantrum Girl” and “Destructo Kid,” but even a clubhouse. Stay tuned for further world-saving. (Graphic fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-448-44698-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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