Predictable in course, cast, and outcome but sweetened by a strong dose of wish fulfillment.
An ordinary seventh grader’s discovery that he’s really a superhero leads to trials and tribulations aplenty.
Noah’s yen to stand out comes home with a vengeance when he’s informed that he is in truth a gravitar. He needs only a course in martial arts training to control his gravity-manipulating powers before joining a secret society dedicated to protecting “all that is true, good, and beautiful!” Classmate Haley, supposedly a close friend, turns out to be a gravitar herself—and assigned to monitor him. Then Noah’s long-missing great-uncle Saul, a gravitar outcast with a nefarious agenda, shows up, promising him a shortcut to far greater powers. As if finding ways to practice his unruly abilities without revealing them in public isn’t challenge enough, Noah’s no longer sure who to trust. For all her protagonist’s emotional conflicts, Davis keeps the tone light, the pacing quick, and the first-person narrative—which is punctuated by monochrome cartoon illustrations and explosive sound effects to mark twists and revelations—simple. Spider-Man’s classic line about great power and great responsibility crops up far too often, and the casting is hackneyed: Haley is typecast as the super-organized, overachieving girl, and chubby, Black, trumpet-playing bestie Rodney alternates between providing comic relief and being a recovery project for the white leads. But at least by the end an evil scheme is foiled, and Noah knows who his real friends are.
Predictable in course, cast, and outcome but sweetened by a strong dose of wish fulfillment. (Superhero fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593445334
Page Count: 272
Publisher: WaterBrook
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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