Bugs and boys sound twin themes in this unvarnished debut. Amidst pranks, horselaughs, and who-likes-whom conversations, Megan scours her Houston neighborhood for the 25 different insects she needs for a sixth-grade biology assignment. Infuriatingly, after her bug-loving little brother Alexander sends her back to square one by reverently burying the specimens she’s managed to gather, obnoxious classmate Charlie dubs her “Beggin’ Megan” and subjects her to a series of buggy puns and practical jokes. Though Megan makes a few wrong turns, such as sneaking into the lunchroom kitchen after hours (only to discover that it’s not infested, despite the usual rumors about school food), in general she sticks to the straight and narrow, mending fences with Alexander, and even using the newfound insight that Charlie is mortally afraid of insects constructively—helping him with the assignment rather than torpedoing his standing with the other lads by blabbing. A friendship is born. Zollman has a tendency to spell out lessons and characters’ feelings rather than let readers pick them up from context, but Megan, despite her temper, is more of a peacemaker than a soldier in the gender wars, and bugs are always a surefire grossout motif in preteen fiction. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: June 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8234-1584-8
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
Reports of children requesting rewrites of The Reluctant Dragon are rare at best, but this new version may be pleasing to young or adult readers less attuned to the pleasures of literary period pieces. Along with modernizing the language—“Hmf! This Beowulf fellow had a severe anger management problem”—DiTerlizzi dials down the original’s violence. The red-blooded Boy is transformed into a pacifistic bunny named Kenny, St. George is just George the badger, a retired knight who owns a bookstore, and there is no actual spearing (or, for that matter, references to the annoyed knight’s “Oriental language”) in the climactic show-fight with the friendly, crème-brulée-loving dragon Grahame. In look and spirit, the author’s finely detailed drawings of animals in human dress are more in the style of Lynn Munsinger than, for instance, Ernest Shepard or Michael Hague. They do, however, nicely reflect the bright, informal tone of the text. A readable, if denatured, rendition of a faded classic. (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-3977-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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