Readers may well feel that the wait in between battles and heists feels a little too much like school.
Even a school for rogues is, at its core, a school.
“So you run a school for thieves…I mean, rogues,” Colm Candorly asks, early in the novel. He’s speaking to Finn Argos, who’s missing two fingers and bears a scar across his face. “It’s not a school,” Finn tells him, more than once. But Finn lies. Learning to be a dungeoneer means endless lock-picking drills, reading the Rogue’s Encyclopedia, and listening to recitations of rules. The rules turn out to be extremely useful, though, and even funny, like Rule 23: “Be the best there is at what you do and always aware that someone does it better.” The dialogue in the book is often witty, especially when it comes from Finn. He has a long list of terms for meeting your maker, including “paid his debts” and “lost his wager.” “Of course,” he says, “anyone else—a warrior, a wizard, a ranger, you name it—they just die, plain and simple. But we rogues are much too clever for that.” The problem is that for chapters at a time, the book is nothing but clever talk. Colm spends some of his time as an apprentice rogue escaping from deathtraps, fighting orcs, and being attacked by a giant scorpion; the battles and heists—when they finally come—are satisfying and occasionally shocking.
Readers may well feel that the wait in between battles and heists feels a little too much like school. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-233814-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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