A dark take on the hero’s journey with a reminder for children to appreciate the advice of their elders.
In this adventure story for young readers, the titular hero leaves his childhood home to make his own way through life on a journey to the beautiful Blue Castle, along the way encountering obstacles that include hungry beasts, violent storms and dangerous fires.
Reginald James lives an idyllic life in the forest with his family until the day comes when his mother tells him that it is time he set off on his own. She then sends him out into the world with the knowledge that he will likely never see her again. Reggie decides to embark on a quest to the Blue Castle, which he spies in the distance, and to make a new home there. First, however, he must use his wits to find food in the forest, cross rivers though he can’t swim, and avoid the creatures in the woods that want to kill and eat him. At first, Reggie relies on the various valuable lessons his mother taught him, but his ego grows alongside his successes, and he pushes her advice aside, deriding it as too old-fashioned to apply to his modern world. Will this overconfidence backfire before he reaches his journey’s end? Debut author Lethert packs his story with a variety of tension-filled moments, but his writing, which occasionally changes from past to present tense and back again, can sometimes be confusing. He also provides excessive, repetitive detail for every step of Reggie’s quest; a passage in which Reggie struggles to cross a stream extends over seven pages that detail every foothold and every slip, to the point of being exhausting rather than exciting. The stark, startlingly depressing conclusion provides a fitting moral to the story, but it may also be too upsetting for some young readers. Nevertheless, if they are able to understand and move past the more traumatic moments in the tale, they will learn valuable lessons about the importance of maintaining a humble, grateful attitude.
A dark take on the hero’s journey with a reminder for children to appreciate the advice of their elders.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1496114860
Page Count: 126
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
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. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
