Skates by without landing any impressive tricks.
When Geronimo Stilton must go undercover in a figure-skating competition to stop a thief, there’s just one little problem: He doesn’t know how to skate.
Everyone’s trying to guess who will win a special prize in the couples category of the Mouse Island Ice Skating Championships: Will it be Lobelia Tutu, or perhaps the mysterious Masked Skaters, or maybe Anastasia Goudanov, the great-great-great-niece of Olga Goudanov, whose legendary ice skates, gifted to her by Czar Mousoloff of Mousekow, are the contest’s prize? Amping the excitement is the possibility that the prize skates hold a clue to a hidden treasure. After Geronimo accidentally uncovers the identities of the Masked Skaters, they reveal they’re plants protecting the skates from a would-be thief. With their identities compromised, they need another investigator to step in and protect the prize—and they recruit Geronimo, despite his inability to skate. To get him ready, his friends and family recruit Lobelia to teach him so he’ll no longer be a “mozzarella” (rodent slang for rookie), and his love interest, Creepella von Cacklefur, steps in as his partner. Light, informational bits about skating bolster the plot until the competition, which is almost disastrous for Geronimo, though the resolution brings no surprises. With the hero’s distinctive personality and brightly colored text and illustrations, this book’s standard Stilton fare. Inconsistencies within the text do the series’ young enthusiasts a disservice.
Skates by without landing any impressive tricks. (Adventure. 6-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-30621-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds.
Pranksters George and Harold face the deadliest challenge of their checkered careers: a supersmart, superstrong gym teacher.
With the avowed aim of enticing an audience of “grouchy old people” to the Waistband Warrior’s latest exploit, Pilkey promises “references to health care, gardening, Bob Evans restaurants, hard candies, FOX News, and gentle-yet-effective laxatives.” He delivers, too. But lest fans of the Hanes-clad hero fret, he also stirs in plenty of fart jokes, brain-melting puns, and Flip-O-Rama throwdowns. After a meteorite transforms Mr. Meaner into a mad genius (evil, of course, because “as everyone knows, most gym teachers are inherently evil”) and he concocts a brown gas that turns children into blindly obedient homework machines, George and Harold travel into the future to enlist aid from their presumably immune adult selves. Temporarily leaving mates and children (of diverse sexes, both) behind, Old George and Old Harold come to the rescue. But Meaner has a robot suit (of course he has a robot suit), and he not only beats down the oldsters, but is only fazed for a moment when Capt. Underpants himself comes to deliver a kick to the crotch. Fortunately, gym teachers, “like toddlers,” will put anything in their mouths—so an ingestion of soda pop and Mentos at last spells doom, or more accurately: “CHeffGoal-D’BLOOOM!”
Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-50492-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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