An engaging, positivity-preaching fantasy with Seussian and Lewis Carroll–esque aspects.
A boy gets transported to an absurdist world, where the mishap-prone hero must solve the abduction of a prominent healer.
Suberla’s middle-grade fantasy introduces schoolboy Joey Rheelat, whose life seems defined by good intentions gone awry (as when he used oven cleaner on the kitchen floor and melted it). Joey’s father died tragically, and the kid has a problematic relationship with mom’s new husband, George. The stepdad is not cruel, but his overbearing manner and attempts at humorous bonding typically make Joey feel small. One of Joey’s eccentricities (that George disdains) is sleeping on a waterbed. Out of that waterbed erupts a leprechaun-ish magical fellow who announces himself as “Wheedles of Waiderfled, the Eighteenth King of the Zing Fling” and for whom Joey is somehow key to a successful reign. Wheedles teleports Joey to the realm of Waiderfled, full of strange creatures, fun-loving shape-shifters, crystal trees, and surreal landscapes. Omnipresent throughout the place are the ho-drees, floating and colorful geometrical shape thingies that surround any intelligent being young in body and/or spirit—they symbolize hopes and dreams, not to mention imagination and creativity. But Joey innocently utters the most taboo of all words—can’t(as in “I just can’t believe it”)—and scores of ho-drees drop down, inert, and the boy is expelled back to his old reality. Guardedly taken back into Waiderfled, Joey finds he must embark on a pilgrimage to see the most prominent “Ho-dree Doctor,” who can fix the crisis. But she has vanished—apparently abducted by the cronelike Haidderdred, who has no ho-drees of her own and covets those of others. In Suberla’s tight, straight-ahead, minimal-complications narrative, Joey’s heirloom Polaroid camera, which develops unusual powers in Waiderfled, figures significantly. Readers may find this whimsical and enjoyable material reminiscent of the works of Dr. Seuss, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Suberla hails from a background in self-help and life-advice material, and the lessons here in self-confidence and can-do spirit are obvious. Despite the villain’s orc-ish aspects, the conflict with Haidderdred resolves in a literal shower of sweetness and light. Some parents of young readers may be taken aback that Joey utters an expletive.
An engaging, positivity-preaching fantasy with Seussian and Lewis Carroll–esque aspects.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Oak Line Press
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2023
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
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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