Gripping monster mischief highlights an environmental problem but gives the protagonists little to do.
A seaside vacation turns into a monster attack when plastic ocean garbage undergoes a horrifying transformation in this second installment of an illustrated children’s book series.
Twelve-year-old, red-haired Pixie Van Dimple and her White family have planned a beach day. While off to get fish and chips for lunch, Pixie and her sister, Trixie, tell their father they’re going to use the bathroom—but they are actually heading to the candy store to buy sweets. As they walk back, they decide that since they can’t spot a trash bin, they’ll just dump their garbage in the ocean. It’s the last straw for the sea: Pixie and Trixie’s trash sets off a catastrophic transformation, and a garbage monster rises from the ocean. While the uncredited illustrations keep their bright colors and friendly cartoon feel, the situation described in the text is dire: “All around the girls, death and destruction ensued, the likes of it never witnessed before / On a scale of 1 to ten since you ask, this was spectacularly HARD CORE!” Leaving the sisters behind, the rhyming narrative amps up the worldwide chaos, eventually relating the use of space lasers to solve the plastic mess. Meanwhile, Pixie and Trixie miraculously survive in a huge beach hole dug by overzealous vacationers. Though the monster mayhem highlights the disaster of plastic in the ocean, the tale moves away from the sisters, who just cause the cataclysm and then persevere through no efforts of their own. McAllister uses rhyming phrases of different lengths, with frequent interjections that throw off the scansion. In addition to the complex vocabulary (synchronised quintet, sensitive dermis) that would challenge the picture-book crowd, the uneven font makes for a difficult reading experience. Strong, independent middle-grade readers are the likely target audience for the text, but the flat cartoon images, sanitized of the narrative’s violence, feel aimed at a much younger group. The London author’s comedic tone and action-packed story will appeal to budding environmentalists. But the clunky format and design place the tale between age categories.
Gripping monster mischief highlights an environmental problem but gives the protagonists little to do.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-398-41427-3
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Austin Macauley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Elegiac and hopeful.
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out.
When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.
Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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