This romp will definitely find an audience.
This young spy does not suffer from the sophomore slump!
Barnett and Lowery team up again in this second outing of international espionage mystery with royal overtones. In 1989, the queen of England once again calls on young Mac after she receives a letter threatening the theft of the crown jewels. Neatly interwoven with Mac’s caper is the true story of Col. Thomas Blood, a 17th-century thief of the aforementioned jewels. Barnett combines mystery, riddles, a lot of humor, an engaging first-person narration, and nostalgia for all things 1980s into a (mostly) smooth whodunit for young readers. Readers of Chris Barton and Don Tate’s Whoosh! (2016) or kids who’ve written a report on Lonnie Johnson will notice one anachronism: The Super Soaker may have been invented in 1982, but it was only released in 1990 and branded under that name in 1991. Lowery’s believably childlike cartoons, done in black and white with bright yellow and green highlights, are amusing but don't always correspond with the text (partly due to this color choice, explained in a prefatory note young readers might well ignore). Quibbles aside, this is a nifty mystery for young readers and a worthy sequel to the first. Here’s hoping No. 3 will get all the details right and add some characters of color to diversify the white-presenting cast.
This romp will definitely find an audience. (Mystery. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-14368-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
A feel-good tale of a clever and determined stallion set against a well-developed landscape.
In mid-19th-century Nevada, a colt named Sky grows up to lead his band of wild horses.
Parry’s moving story follows the pattern of her recent animal tales, A Wolf Called Wander (2019) and A Whale of the Wild (2020), chronicling a wild animal’s life in the first person, imagining its point of view, and detailing and appreciating the natural world it inhabits. As Sky grows from wobbly newborn to leader of his family, he faces more than the usual challenges for colts who must fight their stallions or leave their herds when they are grown up. Fagan’s appealing black-and-white illustrations help readers envision this survival story. Sky’s adventures include forced service with the Pony Express; being befriended by an enslaved Paiute boy; escaping to find his now-captured band; and helping them escape the silver miners who’d destroyed their world. Animal lovers will applaud his ingenuity and stubbornness. Although Sky’s band has suffered serious injuries (his mother is blind), he and Storm, a mare who was his childhood companion, lead them toward safety in a new wilderness. The writer’s admiration for these wild horses and her concerns about human destruction of their environment come through even more clearly in a series of concluding expository essays discussing the wild horses, the Indigenous Americans, the natural history of the Great Basin, silver mining, and the Pony Express.
A feel-good tale of a clever and determined stallion set against a well-developed landscape. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780062995957
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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