A flying start for a series that puts in a strong bid for Magic Treehouse grads.
Two free-range 25th-century children get into and out of pickles while tagging along with their research-scientist parents to various past eras.
In this series opener, a prank involving Hannibal’s elephants and a mouse lands the Faradays in hot water with their employer, the Cosmos Institute. They are consequently sent for punishment to 1648 Prague to educate Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III about fashions in footwear. Instantly bored for understandable reasons, teenage sibs Dawkins and Hypatia fall in with Jan Richthausen, an alchemist who actually can turn mercury into gold—using found technology more advanced than the Faradays’ own. Somebody is meddling dangerously. In sharp contrast to most authors who try their hand at time-travel tales, Seven has plainly thought out consistent and (reasonably) plausible ways for his characters to interact with the past without causing paradoxes or catastrophic changes to the future. Though everyone in every era speaks the same colloquial English and the source of the futuristic devices and substances is never revealed in this setup episode, the author does propel Dawk, Hype and his other lively characters through a rousing multicentury chase that loops back around to close with tantalizing hints of adventures to come.
A flying start for a series that puts in a strong bid for Magic Treehouse grads. (Science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62370-011-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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