Alien Spaceheadz approach their goal of recruiting 3.14 million + one Earthling SPHDZ…can they save Earth!?
Fifth grader Michael K. and his human friends Venus and TJ have done a whizbang job of helping advertisement-spewing, oddball aliens Bob, Jennifer and Major Fluffy (their leader and hamster) recruit. The SPHDZ counter falls only a bit short, so Bob and Jennifer decide to ask Santa Claus for the final SPHDZ needed to save the Earth from being turned off. Little do they know, the Santa they’re waiting in line to see is none other than Agent Umber of the Anti-Alien Agency! Michael K. & co. avert disaster, and the SPHDZ Counter hits its goal…then starts counting backwards! Evil Aliens are stealing the earthlings’ Brainwave (the sum of the collected SPHDZ) for their own nefarious ends! Feeling betrayed, Michael K. gives up. Meanwhile, Mom K. and Dad K.’s secret lives (ZIA Agent and Secret Ad man) are on a collision course. Can Spaceheadz with unlikely allies get Michael K. back on board and save the cosmos? Scieszka and Prigmore deliver the most madcap installment yet in their uber-illustrated series. Surprise villains (foreshadowed in previous volumes)! Surprise interstellar-parking-lot plans! Surprise doughnut upchuck! Nonfiction interludes on networks, group intelligence and symbiosis—not to mention the goofy websites—add to the fun.
Fans will be in heaven, especially at the certainty of further installments. (Humorous science fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7955-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Secret codes…science and math tidbits…hamster-translation websites…and the odd flying whale. ULTRA FRESH! (Humorous science...
With the evil SPHDZ in control of the Brainwave, is there any hope left for mankind…or hamsterkind?
Brooklyn fifth-grader Michael K., his human friends Venus and TJ and their alien buddies Jennifer, Bob and Major Fluffy are at a total loss. They reached their goal of recruiting 3.14 million earthlings to be SPHDZ, but the chief of the Anti-Alien Agency turned out to be an evil alien. He stole the brainwave they had collected. Now, the group, along with unlikely allies Agents Umber and Hot Magenta of the AAA, DarkWave X agents Delta, Tango and Foxtrot, and Mom K., Dad K. and Baby K., lives in fear that he will use it to bllrrp the planet Gonf and then turn off Earth. They can’t figure out why the chief hasn’t used it yet, and they have gone through plans A through Y to try to recover it. When the chief’s plan is revealed, it’s going to take the whole biosphere to cut him down to size. The madcap conclusion to Scieszka and Prigmore’s delusionally frenetic and fantastically silly series will delight SPHDZ across the land, but it probably isn’t a great place to start this Internet-integrated, highly illustrated quartet. Start youngsters with the first, and they will be SPHDZ (and readers) for life.
Secret codes…science and math tidbits…hamster-translation websites…and the odd flying whale. ULTRA FRESH! (Humorous science fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7957-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A goofy romp through suddenly fungible reality, not as self-consciously clever as the previous episode and all the better...
It’s all about the chocolate in this episode, but Ed’s struggles with the literal-minded magic coin he found in the series opener (Stranger Things, 2013) continue.
Ed unwisely chooses a carton of chocolate bars to sell for a school fundraiser and then compounds the error by urging a helpful friend to carry them out of the hot sun “as fast as possible!” Ed arrives home to discover that traveling at just under the speed of light has melted the bars into unsalable mush. As if that’s not pickle enough, thanks to the magic coin in his pocket, references to certain well-known proverbs leave money talking and the temperature zooming up and down after Ed’s little brother Derwin does something about the weather by making a cardboard thermostat (instead of just complaining about it). Even mentioning “pigtails” and a “ponytail” to his sisters has livestock leaving messes under the kitchen table—and “bangs” nearly results in a catastrophe. Easy of language and liberally endowed with jokes, twists and comical line drawings, the tale scrambles its way energetically to a chocolaty resolution based on an old saw about lemons and lemonade.
A goofy romp through suddenly fungible reality, not as self-consciously clever as the previous episode and all the better for it. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-49603-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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