Like fast food, this is quick and goes down easy.
When fast-food-frenzied monsters descend, only one hero can save the day.
Bespectacled Carlton Crumple is relentlessly terrorized by his mulleted older brother, Milt, and grows up fearful of everything. Talking to his best friend, Lulu, Carlton has a sudden insight, deciding to stop being scared and to become a creature catcher. He lands a job at Chubbzy Cheeseburgers but is sternly reprimanded when he replaces the ketchup with his superspicy Awesome Chili Sauce. When a horde of fast-food–obsessed (but not-too-scary) monsters attack, Carlton Crumple, Creature Catcher, and his special sauce may be key to stopping them. This middle-grade graphic offering is the first in a proposed series (with a promised second volume entitled Tater Invaders). Writer and illustrator Fremont’s animation background is highly visible here, with fast pacing, quirky characters, and ample silliness. Driven by its jet-fueled plotting, young readers careen from one side-splitting scene to the next as the simply wrought, full-color (courtesy of Matison) cartoons rocket sequences along. Those who enjoy complex characters may be at a loss, but those who want their humor to have a fast and furious velocity should be right at home here, making this perfect for fans of series like Chris Schweizer’s The Creeps or Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady. Carlton appears to be white; secondary characters display various skin tones.
Like fast food, this is quick and goes down easy. (Graphic fantasy. 7-11)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64595001-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A knight’s tale in shining armor.
In the 14th century, young Max yearns to buck convention and be a knight.
In this fictional, European-esque kingdom, Max lives with Uncle Budrick, a comically terrible troubadour. Children in Byjovia follow in the career footsteps of their families; Max however, dreams not of songs and lutes but of becoming a knight. When Budrick is captured by the nefarious usurper King Gastley, Max finds a crew of like-minded kids and forms the Midknights. Together they fight an evil sorceress, zombies, and winged rats in their efforts to save Max’s uncle and, ultimately, the kingdom from Gastley’s evil grasp. This middle-grade graphic/prose hybrid plays with gender conventions, mixing in a feel-good theme reaffirming that everyone should be able to follow their dreams and defy pre-existing gender constructs. Plucky, gender-nonconforming Max makes a heartfelt soliloquy imploring the king to allow bothgirls and boys to pursue what they love, be it magic, knighthood, or writing. The zippy mix of prose and comics panels rockets along with quick plotting and lots of funny medieval madcap antics. Peirce’s black-and-white illustrations will be stylistically familiar to fans of his Big Nate series and should resonate with fans of Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid. Main character Max presents white, as are most of the Midknights with the exception of one dark-skinned boy; one other is chubby, and a secondary adult character uses a leg prosthesis.
A knight’s tale in shining armor. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 7-11)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-93108-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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