A giggly geography lesson for trip planners and daydreamers.
Buckle up and get ready for a rollicking road trip with merry monsters.
This cast of joyful monsters in bright colors with myriad different sizes, shapes, facial features, and appendages is guaranteed to make young readers giggle. In this tour of urban and nature-based tourist attractions, the rhyming west-to-east journey connects U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Hollywood, Nashville, Orlando, and the nation’s capital, with national parks such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Everglades, and the Cape Cod National Seashore (with one generic amusement park tossed in for good measure). Most destinations merit a double-page spread with scrapbook border and the state name emblazoned across a federal highway marker. Lively illustrations capture a monster’s mischief at every stop. The San Francisco cable car turns one monster slightly green with nausea. Another grinning monster mugs for the camera as the fifth face on Mount Rushmore while a third gets its “15 seconds’ fame” compliments of Wrigley Field’s Kiss Cam. Decked out in sunglasses and floral swim trunks, a daring monster boogie boards over Niagara Fall. But who knew another would get dizzy atop Lady Liberty? In a quiet feminist statement, readers are admonished that “should you meet the president, / assure her he [the monster] won’t bite.” Background illustrations show tourists with a range of skin tones and ages, and the aforementioned president is white.
A giggly geography lesson for trip planners and daydreamers. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-53411-037-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Younger readers will wish that they could toss their heads…or at least that they knew someone who could.
A lonely zombie makes new friends just by being herself—on Halloween.
Quelled by Auntie Departed’s warnings, young Ghoulia has always confined her outdoor play to the walled grounds of Crumbling Manor…until she eavesdrops on some living children and learns about Halloween. Taking advantage of this perfect opportunity to fit in, she sneaks out with her albino greyhound (and gifted hairdresser), Tragedy, for some trick-or-treating. Hearing her name as “Julia,” the costumed children welcome her. But when they compete to see who’s the scariest, Ghoulia forgets herself and does her “special scary move,” tossing her head in the air and catching it in one hand. The children stand wide-eyed through no fewer than three illustrations on three successive pages—and then welcome her with wild delight and agree to keep her secret from the grown-ups. From then on they become regular visitors to Crumbling Manor. In full-color pictures that take up all or most of every page, Cantini depicts her undead urchin Tim Burton–style, with stitched lips, gray skin, and purple shadows beneath huge eyeballs (everyone else appears white—or sheet white). Assisted by suggestive labels (“Creaky steps”; “A spider visiting from the attic”; “Painting of Grandad Coffin”), the manorial setting has an Addams Family vibe and provides just the right spooky setting for this series opener. Halloween-themed activities are included in the backmatter.
Younger readers will wish that they could toss their heads…or at least that they knew someone who could. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3293-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Returning fans will be happy to see their friends, but this outing's unlikely to win them new ones.
In the second installment of the Binder of Doom series, readers will reconnect with Alexander Bopp, who leads the Super Secret Monster Patrol, a group of mutant children who protect the citizens of their beloved town of Stermont.
His friends Nikki and Rip rejoin him to add new monsters and adventures to their ever growing binder of monsters. As in series opener Brute-Cake (2019), Alexander and his friends attend the local library’s summer program, this time for “maker-camp.” They are assigned a Maker Challenge, in which each camper is to “make a machine that performs a helpful task”; meanwhile, mechanical equipment is being stolen all over Stermont. Unfortunately, the pacing and focus of the book hop all over the place. The titular boa constructor (a two-headed maker-minded snake and the culprit behind the thefts) is but one of many monsters introduced here, appearing more than two-thirds of the way through the story—just after the Machine Share-Time concludes the maker-camp plotline. (Rip’s “most dangerous” invention does come in handy at the climax.) The grayscale illustrations add visuals that will keep early readers engaged despite the erratic storyline; they depict Alexander with dark skin and puffy hair and Nikki and Rip with light skin. Monster trading cards are interleaved with the story.
Returning fans will be happy to see their friends, but this outing's unlikely to win them new ones. (Paranormal adventure. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31469-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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