Even sans actual rodents, just about as wild as one might hope the West can get.
Waldo only dreams, now and then, that his parents turn themselves into a squirrel and a prairie dog.
The rest—the flying house, the hijacking, the wild aerial race, and climactic dust-up with the “dastardliest criminal in the world”—turns out to be all too real. The “heavyset” lad (“chubby,” to quote fierce but frank ally Iris, who also goes by “Shorty” because she’s 3 feet tall) is annoyed but not too surprised one 1891 morning to discover that his brilliant if remote inventor parents, Sharon and McLaron, have turned the house into a flying machine to enter a certain continent-spanning race. Numerous obstacles to winning first prize arise on the way, including a competitor’s hurled bananas and a holdup by criminally decent Rose Blackwood in an effort to prove herself to her evil clan by springing her older brother, Benedict, the Arizona Territory’s most fearsome bandit, from jail. Benedict turns out to be a baddie, all right, but no match for the Barons and Rose. Plans go wrong but turn right by the end, just in time for Waldo’s 11th birthday and a new invention, inspired by his recurrent dream, that promises further distinctly unusual family adventures. In Grochalska’s scattered vignettes there is some diversity of skin color in crowd scenes, but Waldo and the rest of the main cast are white.
Even sans actual rodents, just about as wild as one might hope the West can get. (Adventure. 10-13)Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944995-13-3
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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