A visually captivating (if a bit culturally backward) outer-space escapade from France.
A day in the life of an interplanetary postman becomes a comic, galaxywide romp.
Bob has ascended the Planetary Post ranks after his first, successful adventure (The Postman From Space, 2020). But today he’s given just one measly letter to deliver, and he’s forced to train a new postal carrier, Marcelle. The delivery should be simple, but a series of mishaps sends the duo to the other side of the galaxy. On the way, they pick up a musical hitchhiker and visit several delightfully unusual planets, all while being pursued by the Biker Bandits, a gang of thieving outlaws. So much for a routine day as a space postman! Originally published in French, this interplanetary adventure follows a familiar reluctant-hero arc. The action is propelled by well-paced panels and humorous dialogue. Whimsical planets populated by quirky characters are created with pastel and earth tones delineated by rounded linework. Fanciful and fun, the story is brought to an abrupt end by the eleventh-hour arrival of the bumbling Planetary Police. There are missteps: Bob’s weight is lampooned by others, and Bob blames Marcelle’s appetite for getting them into trouble. Additionally, multiple illustrations show chopsticks stuck vertically in a bowl of food, an impropriety in many Asian cultures. Most humanoid characters, including Bob and Marcelle, have light beige or pink skin. One police officer has brown skin. The nonhumanoid ETs vary in appearance.
A visually captivating (if a bit culturally backward) outer-space escapade from France. (Graphic science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4520-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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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