A swift introduction to a colorful world that’s a bit light on plot but offers great jokes.
Two adorable foods have an adventure in Beaudry’s graphic novel for young readers, illustrated by Perry.
In the colorful city of Foodtopia, different types of food live, work, and play, but their lives are governed by a strict hierarchy. As in the real world, a pyramid structure dictates where the different food items fall, but in this case, it’s in terms of their power and influence. The rich and famous foods—also known as “the glitz and the ham”—sit at the top in the Toppings, while the bottom layer of this society are the Crumbs, made up of “the dreamers…the party animals…and, of course, the strange.” This latter category is where heroes Peanut and Jelly figure into Foodtopia. Peanut longs to rise to the top one day, but getting there as a lowly crumb-yard worker is a tall order, and his boss already thinks that he jokes around too much with his co-worker and best pal Jelly. His boss might just be right: When Jelly’s horsing around accidentally sets loose the deadly Crumb Feeder—a giant, purple, snakelike monster—all of Foodtopia is threatened. Can Peanut and Jelly work together to contain the beast and prove their worth as top-shelf toppings? Creator and writer Beaudry’s background in children’s animation, including as a staff writer for Muppet Babies, can be felt throughout this romp of anthropomorphic condiments. The action-packed sequences, witty puns, Jelly’s joyful attitude, and a sense of humor based in non sequiturs easily calls to mind the wonderfully absurd world of SpongeBob SquarePants. Also, as in an animated series, the events of this graphic novel feel like a self-contained episode with low stakes and relatively easy resolutions—but the possibilities are there for more adventures investigating this fictional world. Perry’s vibrant, full-color cartoon illustrations feel perfectly matched to the story’s zany qualities, and Beaudry’s pop-culture references and wordplay will elicit chuckles from readers of all ages: “I’m no wise-cracker,” Peanut cries at one point. “I’m too brittle for that life.”
A swift introduction to a colorful world that’s a bit light on plot but offers great jokes.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781545819692
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Papercutz
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
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