A sweet take on the theme that differences can be overcome even in the face of self-doubts and mood swings.
Cute monsters work their way through friendship and personal issues as new threats to peaceful coexistence with the nearby human town arise.
Following two years of amicable relations in the wake of the events of Misfit Mansion (2023), the monstrous residents of Mr. Halloway’s Home for Horrors are busily converting their residence into a haunted house in order to host Dead End Springs’ annual harvest festival. Blue-skinned Iris isn’t as happy as she could be, though—not only because as a dreamon created by a human’s nightmare she wonders whether she’s inherently evil, but because she’s being snubbed by her friends Agnes and Kel, who lately always seem to be off in town working on monster fashion designs. Little does she suspect that serious complications are on the way, in the form of the arrival of two highly mercurial Pied Piper Parrots, whose magic songs stir up negative feelings within everyone in earshot, and the return of Anemone Greeves, a monster-hating villain with a fiendish scheme to turn the folk in town into a terrified anti-horror mob. Still, a few intense moments and scary transformations notwithstanding, Iris and her compatriots positively radiate adorability throughout. Strongly evoking chibi-style manga, Davault’s art sets that tone with a brightly colored cast of big-eyed horrors and racially diverse humans.
A sweet take on the theme that differences can be overcome even in the face of self-doubts and mood swings. (Graphic fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9781665972277
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts.
Catfished…by a ghost!
Harry Mancini, an 11-year-old White boy, was born and lives in Harry Houdini’s house in New York City. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s obsessed with Houdini and his escapology. Harry and his best friend, Zeke, are goofing around in some particularly stupid ways (“Because we’re idiots,” Zeke explains later) when Harry hits his head. In the aftermath of a weeklong coma, Harry finds a mysterious gift: an ancient flip phone that has no normal phone service but receives all-caps text messages from someone who identifies himself as “HOUDINI.” Harry is wary of this unseen stranger, like any intelligently skeptical 21st-century kid, but he’s eventually convinced: His phone friend is the real deal. So when Houdini asks Harry to try one of his greatest tricks, Harry agrees. Harry—so full of facts about Houdini that he litters his storytelling with infodumps, making him an enthusiastic tour guide to Houdini’s life—is easily tricked by his supportive-seeming hero. Harry, Zeke, and Houdini are all just the right amount of snarky, and while Harry’s terrifying adventure has an occasionally inconsistent voice, the humor and tension make this an appealing page-turner. Archival photographs of Harry Houdini make the ghostly visitation feel closer. Zeke is Black, and Harry Houdini, as he was in life, is a White Jewish immigrant.
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts. (historical note, bibliography) (Supernatural adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4515-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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