Intermittently exciting despite a far-fetched plot and slapdash execution.
Where is Robin Hood when you need him? Closer than you think.
Admiration for his hero earned Pip, 12, the nickname “Baby Robin,” a source of both pride and chagrin—he’s yet to hit a target with his bow and arrow. Pip’s cousins Lucy and Harold support him even when pride causes Pip to lose his penny in a contest. The children of wool merchants in 12th-century England, they wish Richard the Lionheart would return to oust Prince John, but only Pip is foolhardy enough to provoke the local baron’s men, brushing off warnings to be careful in dangerous times—after all, Robin Hood wouldn’t stand by as innocent peasants are beaten and starved. Accompanying his father to the Bradford Fair offers new opportunities to emulate his hero. There, Pip talks Harold and Lucy into a daring exploit that goes awry. Averting disaster requires effort, ingenuity, and new allies. Like the word “kids” in the title, the children’s dialogue skews contemporary (“okay” and “yeah, I guess”), an effect that’s exacerbated by the insufficiently detailed setting. Characters, all seemingly white, are heroes or villains. Even readers familiar with the folk hero’s mythology will be perplexed by Pip’s repeated contests with and taunting of the powerful, who can and do crush those he wishes to defend. Conflicts are easily resolved, lessons tidily learned.
Intermittently exciting despite a far-fetched plot and slapdash execution. (Historical fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77086-533-4
Page Count: 196
Publisher: DCB
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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