Mystery (and humor) mavens will eagerly await future cases.
Snoop Troop can solve the case…with a little help from readers.
Fourth-grader Logan Lang loves mysteries; she reads them, and she solves them. That’s why when she hears about mysterious doings at Hurling Rivers Amusement Park on her combination lunch box and police radio, she hotfoots it out there. Someone has stolen the merry-go-round. Logan starts her investigation, but Gustavo Muchomacho, an overeager boy from school, keeps sticking his nose (and his fake mustache) into things. The duo pool their talents just as the whole playground is stolen from the school, and they discover trained moles are behind the thefts…but who’s behind the trained moles? There’s no shortage of suspects, and readers get to guess based on presented evidence. Scroggs kicks off an interactive series of goofy mysteries with this heavily illustrated hybrid of graphic novel, mystery fiction and activity book. Logan regularly breaks the fourth wall to address her narrator and the audience. Readers are asked to sketch suspects (moles) and find evildoers (moles) in the illustrations. Twenty pages of extra activities (along with the admonishment to only write in the book if it belongs to you to avoid the wrath of librarians) follow the satisfyingly silly story.
Mystery (and humor) mavens will eagerly await future cases. (Graphic/mystery hybrid. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-24271-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
"The short, sad life of Tooley Graham was over," doesn't sound like a happy conclusion but is pitch perfect in this short, simple and endearing middle-grade novel that follows on the heels of The Small Adeventure of Popeye and Elvis (2009). Owen Jester is focused on several things during his summer vacation: finding a way to keep his trapped "pet" bullfrog alive and happy, locating what fell off a train with a loud crash! one night and keeping annoying next-door neighbor Viola—who knows everything—out of their business as he schemes with his two best friends, Stumpy and Travis. The discovery of a sleek, red two-person submarine in the brush alongside the tracks changes everything. Can three young, girl-hating boys and a willing and very able—and tolerant—girl move a submarine to Graham Pond? If they manage that, will they ever be able to pilot it? In the heat of a languid Georgia summer vacation, in the dreams of irrepressible youth, anything is possible. O'Connor has spun a lovely read that perfectly captures the schemes and plans of school-age kids in the long days of summer. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-36850-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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