Writing in hip-hop cadences and with a fine disregard for exact rhymes, Smith introduces a dozen Olympians, plus Cerberus and Medusa, in verses paired to melodramatic, superhero-style portraits inked and colored by veteran comics-artist Russell. Between an opening overview (“Playing people like pawns / in a grand game of chess / the gods of Olympus / infinitely test / assorted mortals / while testing each other, / like Hades, / Zeus, / and Poseidon, / true blood brothers . . . ”) and a closing Who’s Who that lists Special Powers and other attributes, readers will get some oblique references to various myths. However, more clearly the repeated message is that they’d better behave and pray that they never draw any immortal’s attention, amorous or otherwise. Discreetly positioned but at best scantily clad, the gods, from Zeus—posed in wrath like the God of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment—to half-mortal Dionysus, have never looked so ripped, nor the goddesses Artemis, Aphrodite, Athena and Hera (the “Queen of Mean”) so voluptuous. Still, an emphatic, beat-heavy read-aloud of the verses may provide the more memorable experience here for young audiences. (source list) (Mythology/poetry. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-316-01043-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back.
Alex’s ability to talk with ghosts puts him in famous company when he and his mom move to Hannibal, Missouri.
Alex, 13, is driven by bitter determination to keep his lifelong ability secret, since it’s already led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia that drove his parents apart and cost his mother a decent job, but it’s not easy. For one thing, his new friend, Bones, is a positively obsessed amateur ghost hunter, and for another, ghosts just won’t leave him alone no matter how rudely he treats them. Notable among the latter is Mark Twain himself, as acerbic and wily as he was in life, who is on the verge of involuntarily degenerating into a raging poltergeist unless Alex can find the unspecified, titular treasure. Alex’s search takes him through Clemens’ writings and tragic private life as well as many of the town’s related attractions on the way to a fiery climax in the public library. Meanwhile, Alex has an apotheosis of his own, deciding that lying to conceal his ability and his unhappy past isn’t worth the sacrifice of a valued friendship. Conveniently for the plot’s needs, Clemens and other ghosts can interact with the physical world at will. Wolfe parlays Alex’s ingrained inability to ignore ectoplasmic accosters into some amusing cross-conversations that help lighten his protagonist’s hard inner tests. The cast, living and otherwise, presents as white.
A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940924-29-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Dreaming Robot
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
The moral of this surreal episode would run something like this: never patronize a fast-food restaurant built where giant mutant bugs can crawl into the meat grinder. Young Roscoe learns this disgusting lesson almost too late when, after six months of nightly Gussy’s “Jungle Drum” burgers, he suddenly discovers that he’s beginning to resemble a praying mantis. Luckily, and despite the best efforts of Gussy’s CEO and cohorts to hush the whole thing up, Roscoe’s genius best friend Kinshasa Rosa Parks Boomer winkles out the cause. Also luckily, once Roscoe modifies his diet, the changes reverse. Elliott (Cool Crazy Crickets, 2000, etc.) is far from the first to take on a “boy-into-bug” premise, and though he introduces a memorably quirky cast, he doesn’t give it much to do besides solve the mystery of why this is happening to Roscoe and others. The high gross-out factor will draw some readers, but they’ll only find characters in search of a story. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-1173-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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