A reading of the first book is a must in order to fully enjoy and appreciate this unpretentiously lesson-drenched sequel....
Welcome back to the Great Rapscott School for Girls of Busy Parents!
The fall semester’s lesson: How to Go Far in Life; the goal: to earn the Great Rapscott Medal for Reaching The Top. As the offbeat Ms. Rapscott reasons, “you cannot reach The Top unless you go far,” but you must also fail several times in the attempt by making mistakes on purpose. However, there is only one place to begin: The Bottom. This time, Bea, Mildred, Annabelle, and Dahlia are present and accounted for, while Fay, having “failed in the best possible way,” is accidentally delivered to The Top on her way to school. With her signature quirky logic, Ms. Rapscott also teaches the girls How to Celebrate a Birthday and How to Make a Bad Day Good. As in the first book, Ms. Rapscatt’s Girls (2015), the emphasis is on building a tone that combines the merry and the Gothic rather than on deep character development The novel hits a pothole with its lack of racial diversity; there’s a brief reference to former students being of “every color, size, and shape,” but hazy descriptions support inferences that the characters are white, an impression reinforced by the black-and-white illustrations. A spot of body diversity labels Mildred as “plump,” but her fatness is a source of shame.
A reading of the first book is a must in order to fully enjoy and appreciate this unpretentiously lesson-drenched sequel. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3824-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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