Book 1 showed promise, and Book 2 fulfills it, elevating tropes to archetypes, with exciting pacing that would make the...
When readers last saw Ben (Nightmare Escape, 2016), he’d just learned about his power to jump into and affect the dreams of others; in this sequel, his skill is growing, and his best friend, Jake, acts as his business partner, operating from the waking world while Ben rescues dreamers from their nightmares.
As well as dealing with nightmare creatures created in human minds, Ben’s navigating both an organized bunch of villains that want to steal kids into the dream world to feed on them and the long line of guardians—of which Ben is one—poised to stop them. Based on a suggestion from Grunberg’s son, the world of Dream Jumpers has expanded greatly, and Grunberg and Turnbloom have hit their stride with pacing. The main characters—the two white boys and an Asian girl named Kaylee—have a stronger presence, and the bad guys, headed by the titular Harvester, are truly horrifying. Readers also meet a mysterious figure who helps Ben out of some tight spots, and the cliffhanger hints at more danger to overcome next time. Major’s beautiful coloring polishes off Turnbloom’s expressive artwork, with backgrounds brimming with detail. The snappy dialogue suits these clever young heroes, who tease one another without getting cruel or cynical.
Book 1 showed promise, and Book 2 fulfills it, elevating tropes to archetypes, with exciting pacing that would make the pages turn faster but for the arresting, immersive artwork on every page. (Graphic adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-82607-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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