Babbitt’s first offering in 25 years does not disappoint. Jack’s pirate crew has fallen on hard times, and as Jack prefers not to take part in the plundering and so contributes the least to their profits, the crew decides that they have to let him go. Jack gets a room at Mrs. Delfresno’s inn and eagerly begins to look for a second career. However, at the end of each day, Jack returns to the inn disappointed and still jobless. Each evening he explains to Mrs. Delfresno and the other boarders why he simply cannot work as a farmer, or a baker, or a fisherman, or, it seems, anything else. And each explanation is somehow connected to a riveting story from his days as a pirate. Jack’s reason, for instance, that he cannot possibly work as a fisherman, is that one of his pirate cohorts, Figley, had morphed into an octopus in the light of the full moon, and for all Jack knows, the fellow might very well still be swimming around somewhere. Jack spins other yarns about fortune tellers, mummy hands, trolls and even a girl who grew up as a seagull. By the final page, it’s obvious what Jack (and Babbitt) can do better than almost anyone else—tell a really good story. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-545-00496-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of...
Trying to salvage failing grades, George and Harold use their handy 3-D Hypno Ring on termagant teacher Ms. Ribble—and succeed only in creating a supervillain with a medusa-like ’do and a yen to conquer the world with wedgie power.
Using a pair of robot sidekicks and plenty of spray starch, she even overcomes Captain Underpants. Is it curtains (or rather, wedgies) for all of us? Can the redoubtable fourth graders rescue the Waistband Warrior (a.k.a. Principal Krupp) and find a way to save the day? Well, duh. Not, of course, without an epic battle waged in low-budget Flip-O-Rama, plus no fewer than three homemade comics, including an “Origin of Captain Underpants” in which we learn that his home planet of Underpantyworld was destroyed by the . . . wait for it . . . “Starch Ship Enterprize.” As in the previous four episodes, neither the pace nor the funky humor (“Diapers and toilets and poop . . . oh my!”) lets up for a moment. Pilkey is still having entirely too much fun with this popular series, which continues to careen along with nary a whiff of staleness. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-04999-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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