Though the premise is romance and the exclamation-mark–laden prose is touched by horror tropes, frothy comedy is the name of...
Celestial monkeyshines and mortifying teen hookups take center stage, with any epic good-vs.-evil battles merely MacGuffins.
Unpopular Jenna, forced to wear appalling rhinestone-and-polyester clothes from the Bulk Emporium, thinks no boy will ever like her. But after she dreams of a boy with feathery wings, her luck may have changed. At her pitiful 14th birthday dinner, the gorgeous waiter (name tag: “Cowpoke Luke”) looks just like the guy from her dream. Miracle of miracles, Luke finds Jenna equally appealing. Unfortunately, they’re plagued both by Luke’s ancient nemesis, Adam, and by their community-theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. Luke, Jenna and Adam are all involved in the accidentally farcical performance, battling out a theoretically epic fray around costume changes and musical numbers. Goofy humor—complete with a recurring supernatural chorus of Michael Jackson songs, an angel with an algebra quiz and the lifesaving antics of babysitter’s nightmare David Lipski—is suitably slapstick. (Unfortunately, it sometimes degenerates into petty stereotypes, as when Luke’s appearance is attractive to “the soprano and alto girls, not to mention a few of the high-tenor boys.”)
Though the premise is romance and the exclamation-mark–laden prose is touched by horror tropes, frothy comedy is the name of the game . (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59643-733-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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