Highly amusing.
The incompetent parents from The Willoughbys (2008) find themselves thawed by global warming.
Henry and Frances haven’t aged since the accident that buried them in snow and froze them for 30 years in the Swiss Alps. Their Rip van Winkle–ish return is archly comedic, with the pair, a medical miracle, realizing (at last!) how much they’ve lost and how baffled they are now. Meanwhile, their eldest son, Tim, is grown and in charge of his adoptive father’s candy empire, now threatened with destitution by a congressional ban on candy (opposed by an unnamed Bernie Sanders). He is father to 11-year-old Richie, who employs ad-speak whenever he talks about his newest toys, like a remote-controlled car (“The iconic Lamborghini bull adorns the hubcaps and hood”). But Richie envies Winston Poore, the very poor boy next door, who has a toy car carved for him by his itinerant encyclopedia-salesman father. Winston and his sister, Winifred, plan to earn money for essentials by offering their services as companions to lonely Richie while their mother dabbles, spectacularly unsuccessfully, in running a B&B. Lowry’s exaggerated characters and breezy, unlikely plot are highly entertaining. She offers humorous commentary both via footnotes advising readers of odd facts related to the narrative and via Henry and Frances’ reentry challenges. The threads of the story, with various tales of parents gone missing, fortunes lost or never found, and good luck in the end, are gathered most satisfactorily and warmheartedly.
Highly amusing. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-42389-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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