by Jo Nesbø & illustrated by Mike Lowery ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2011
Spun from the quirky cast and gaseous premise introduced in Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder (2010), this even sillier sequel expelled by the popular Norwegian crime novelist sends young Lisa and Nilly from Oslo to Paris and from the Middle Ages to Napoleon’s tent on the eve of Waterloo. Their aim? To rescue their eccentric inventor friend Victor Proctor and the love of his youth, Juliette Margarine. Despite pursuit by Juliette’s crimelord husband Claude Cliché and his gang of lookalike thugs, the young folk help to reunite the lovers. They also, with help from the puissant blasting powder of the title and a bathtub time machine, save the Doctor from the guillotine, call off the battle of Waterloo, dance on the stage of the Moulin Rouge, inspire Gustave Eiffel to build a tower, trick Columbus into thinking he’s landed in India and other historical feats. Though Lowery’s illustrations are too rare and sketchy to have much influence and a significant character seems to have been trucked in just to be killed off later, the tale burbles comically along and everything comes out right…in the…end. (Light fantasy. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7974-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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by Jo Nesbø ; illustrated by Mike Lowery
by Jo Nesbø & illustrated by Mike Lowery
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by Andy Marino ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2022
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists.
Princess Grace of Merryland needs rescuing again, forcing two young knights-in-training to face a series of challenges, from hungry cave sharks to a minotaur named Chad.
Actually, Princess Grace is perfectly capable of rescuing herself—again: see Once Upon a Tim (2022)—except that this time, kidnappers have stashed her in a room that’s locked and bolted on the outside…and in the middle of a maze billed, supposedly, as “the most complex and dastardly labyrinth in the world.” So it is that former peasants Tim and his more capable friend Bull—otherwise known as Belinda when she’s not disguised as a boy—plunge into a mess of dark and bewildering tunnels, armed with a ball of twine provided by the surprisingly sapient village idiot Ferkle, to face a series of deadly threats…though the most legendary of all turns out to be an amiable monster with the body of a bull and the head of, well, a dude. Throughout Gibbs’ lighthearted, laugh-out-loud tale, Curtis supplies proper notes of farce or stark terror as appropriate in flurries of line drawings that present most of the humans and the monsters with human features as White, though Belinda appears to present as Black. Along the way, Tim adds educational value to his narrative by flagging and then pausing to define vocabulary-building words like laborious and vexing.
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9928-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis
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