Furnished with a light wash of natural science, a buggy, action-oriented adventure that goes light on the gore and gross...
Budding entomologist Max Darwin makes a wish—and finds himself on Bug Island, where the local insects are threatened by an invasion of hungry reptiles and amphibians.
With little preliminary ado, Patton hands his young protagonist a fascinating old insect encyclopedia and a very special magnifying glass that shrinks him to proper size and plunks him down amid Bug Island’s beleaguered arthropods. It seems a volcanic eruption has laid a land bridge between the island and the neighboring Reptilian Empire—allowing a horde of insect-eating creatures led by roaring Gen. Komodo to cross over. Can Max use his big brain to find a way to save new friends Barton, a titan beetle, genial emperor scorpion Spike, shy trap-door spider Webster, and the rest of the island’s diverse cast of six- or eight-legged residents from becoming a buggy banquet? And will he be able to get back to his original size and home? That would be yes and yes—following plenty of furious but fatality-free fighting and some ingenious further bridge building that puts a river between the bugs and their scaly nemeses. But the war’s not over yet; stay tuned for return visits in two planned sequels. Finished illustrations not seen, but in samples, Bean draws Max as a dark-skinned, black-haired boy.
Furnished with a light wash of natural science, a buggy, action-oriented adventure that goes light on the gore and gross bits. (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-70741-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
A decent start to a silly sci-fi series.
An extraterrestrial teen refugee becomes a Hollywood star.
Citizen Short Nose, a 13-year-old, blue-skinned, six-eyed, bipedal ET, has left his home world in an effort to escape the authoritarian forces that reign there. The teen runaway lands his spacecraft in the middle of Universal Studios and easily blends in among the tourists and actors in movie costumes. Citizen Short Nose quickly changes his name to Buddy C. Burger and befriends Luis Rivera, an 18-year-old Latinx actor who moonlights as Frankenstein on the Universal lot. Inspired to be an actor by his grandmother Wrinkle’s love of Earth culture, Buddy lands a gig on Oddball Academy, playing (of course) an alien from another world. On set, Buddy befriends Cassidy Cambridge, the brown-skinned teen star of the show. Buddy balances keeping his true identity secret (everyone just assumes he’s wearing an alien costume) with becoming an overnight sensation. The book is efficiently written, moving the story forward so quickly that readers won’t have time to think too hard about the bizarre circumstances necessary for the whole thing to work. This series opener’s big problem is the ending: The story just stops. Characters are established and plot mechanics are put together, but the book basically trusts readers to show up for the next installment. Those enamored with Hollywood gags and sci-fi plot boiling will probably be engaged enough to do so.
A decent start to a silly sci-fi series. (Science fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3369-7
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This fractured fairy tale features a hip contemporary voice but relies too heavily on relayed history. Opening with a line that captures both context and fabulously sardonic attitude—“Once upon a time, Jack wouldn’t have been caught dead in a princess rescue”—Riley quickly establishes his protagonists: Jack, pragmatic but mopey, waiting for any chance to rescue a princess, and May, sporting blue-streaked hair, a cell phone and a Punk Princess T-shirt, who has dropped in from another realm. Jack assumes that May’s a princess; May knows only that her grandmother was kidnapped. They set out to rescue grandma, picking up an elegant prince who annoys Jack by being competent. May’s voice is more often feistily modern (“Then you went and got eaten! What’s that about!?”) than stilted (she describes grandma as “[s]o full of life”), but she's positioned within the narrative mainly to be fought over and protected. Unfortunately, plot twists and revelations all derive their meaning from past events in Jack’s world, forcing the text to be so expository that emotional investment never quite catches up. (Fantasy. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9593-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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