Exciting action sneakily infused with points about the relationship between reality and story, delivered by a narrator who...
Barnett recalls another exploit from his childhood days as a secret agent for the queen of England.
Shortly after failing to convince the despicable Craig, his mom’s boyfriend, that the wrestling at WrestleFest Live is (spoiler alert) faked, young Mac receives a call from the worried monarch. It seems that the Tower of London’s ravens are being stolen, and as everyone has heard the old prophecy that if the ravens ever go so will the country, there will be general pandemonium when the news gets out. “Who cares whether the prophecy is real,” the psychologically astute royal cogently remarks. “The prophecy is true.” Following a trail of convenient clues—and learning along the way (this is likewise true) that the queen legally owns every British mute swan, sturgeon, dolphin, and porpoise—Mac travels to Iceland and then the North Pole, catches up with the “KGB Man” who did the dastardly deed, and scotches a scheme to kick-start the prophecy with a public TV announcement. He accomplishes this by ripping off his shirt and wrestling the thief on camera…thus indelibly remaking a real news story into the fake sort. Lowery shovels in further goofy notes with three-color cartoon drawings of various animals and the white-default human cast on nearly every page.
Exciting action sneakily infused with points about the relationship between reality and story, delivered by a narrator who can claim with literal truth that he saved the day “on porpoise.” (Spy thriller. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-14371-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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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