This jokey debut takes too long to get off the ground, but it does feature a few memorable notions and set pieces. Orphaned twins Vernon and Junior Smith wake one morning to find a 700-foot spaceship in their backyard—followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of menacing Pennsylvania Tax Collector Third Class Alton Webershreber, bearing a sales tax bill for $1,800,960.29, due immediately. With the help of Thinker, a vain onboard robot from the future, the twins evade Webershreber long enough to blast off in a bid to raise the money through a bit of interstellar trade. Hunt portrays the twins as expert bargainers (they quickly make a killing selling water to a drought-stricken planet), but he commits the rookie mistake of explaining too much at the beginning, and gets so wrapped up in lampooning adults that he sometimes forgets to keep the story moving along. Toward the end, Thinker makes a snide comment about how primitive humans haven’t discovered yet that Levity counteracts Gravity. This intriguing principle is certainly in operation here, but so weakly that the ride’s a bumpy one. Sequels probable. (Science fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59354-119-8
Page Count: 150
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
In a second set of entries—of a planned three, all first published in somewhat different form online in installments—slacker diarist Greg starts a new school year. After a miserable summer of avoiding swim-team practice by hiding out in the bathroom (and having to wrap himself in toilet paper to keep from freezing), he finally passes on the dreaded “cheese touch” (a form of cooties) to an unsuspecting new classmate, then stumbles through another semester of pranks and mishaps. On the domestic front, his ongoing wars with older brother Rodrick, would-be drummer in a would-be metal band called Löded Diper, share center stage with their mother’s generally futile parenting strategies. As before, the text, which is done in a legible hand-lettered–style font, is liberally interspersed with funny line drawings, many of which feature punch lines in speech balloons. Though even less likable that Junie B. Jones, Greg is (well, generally) at least not actively malicious, and so often is he the victim of circumstance or his own schemes gone awry that readers can’t help but feel empathy. This reasonably self-contained installment closes with a truce between the siblings. A temporary one, more than likely. (Illustrated fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9473-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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