A trilogy opener that will grant readers’ wishes for an accessible, enchanting, action-packed fantasy.
A 12-year-old British boy finds ancient magical lamps and unknowingly restarts a centuries-old supernatural conflict in the latest from former U.K. Children’s Laureate Coelho.
Relic Hamilton, who has Jamaican heritage and wears his hair in a tapered Afro, lives in London with his grandfather above Anansi Antiques, the Soho shop that’s been in their family for generations. It’s filled with treasures that Grandfather collected during his world travels. One day, when Relic is polishing metal objects in the basement, he accidentally releases a powerful evil genie from a brass lamp. Grandfather gets hurt, and Relic is swept up in a clandestine society of genie hunters. Time and space are upended as he’s pushed to his limits, searching for answers about what’s expected of him—a bullied kid who’s trying to save his grandfather and maybe even the whole world. Each short chapter opens with a few stanzas of poetry that set up Relic’s adventures and provide a sampling of award-winner Coelho’s talents as a poet. The momentum of the storytelling, We’s full-page and spot art illustrations, and the combination of prose and poetry come together to create a portrait of an unlikely hero that unfolds in a fantastic middle-grade voice. Readers will arrive at the end impatient for the next series entry. Final art not seen.
A trilogy opener that will grant readers’ wishes for an accessible, enchanting, action-packed fantasy. (illustrated character profiles) (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781536247978
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
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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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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