A young Victorian girl is called to duty in a battle between witchy good and evil.
Except for odd, compelling visions seen in rainy-day puddles, Annabel’s an unremarkable white, middle-class girl schooled in proper behavior. But when her mother unexpectedly sends her off to live with elderly aunts, Annabel arrives on the eve of a crisis in the heart of London. The aunts are witches, of course. London’s aging witches and wizards, members of the Great & Benevolent Magical Society, must rely on Annabel to avert disaster. Mr. Angel is the inventor of a machine that extracts dark magic by feeding on sad things: mourning ribbons, unsent letters, loss and sorrow of all kinds. He plans to feed Annabel to it as the ultimate sad sacrifice, thereby harvesting enough dark magic to immerse the world in evil. Foxlee deftly wields the tropes of witchery: the importance of wands, the character and flight of broomsticks, and the selection of magical objects—for Annabel, a seeing stone. Her heroines—besides Annabel, there’s Kitty, the dark-browed, green-eyed “wild girl” from the streets, and a young troll with aspirations—have grit and heart, and they are willing to get dirty. And they do. Foxlee’s nicely wry tone and moments of incongruous humor break up the tension, while Annabel’s race against time in a harrowing journey deep under London keeps the pages turning. McKay’s three-dimensional art suffers in its matte, black-and-white rendition here, but it’s still a pleasant complement.
Deliciously complex and convincingly detailed. (Historical fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-51285-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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