The theft actually went the other way, and considering the uninspired result, to no worthy purpose.
The weakest entry in the ’Ology series (so far) is undersupplied with content, invention or even the customary embedded and detachable trinkets.
Supposedly the record of a 1907 expedition that explores a South American island on which primitive humans coexist with dinosaurs, the yellowed “notebook” at first glance looks like others in the series. It features wordy, awed comments in a faux hand-lettered type squeezed into crowded spreads and gatefolds around dashed-off watercolors, small pencil sketches, and inset letters, booklets or info cards that are either pasted in or, more often, printed to look as if they were. Crowded around the edges and sometimes overlapping, the insets provide additional dino portraits, cursory infodumps of standard-issue dino data (as it was in 1907, with editorial updates in small print at the bottom) and brief profiles of prominent early paleontologists. The paltry assortment of “realia” consists of a notably unconvincing pouch of silver-glitter “ground dinosaur horn,” a patch of plastic “Allosaurus skin” and four plastic “jewels.” The overall premise and much of the plot should sound familiar to older readers, and indeed, at the end is a purported letter from Arthur Conan Doyle with an unapologetic admission that he stole them from this “document” for his novel The Lost World.
The theft actually went the other way, and considering the uninspired result, to no worthy purpose. (Novelty. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6739-9
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
A blast for action fans, with potential for a long run.
Kicking off a new series with a bang (several bangs, in fact), Stroud sends two young fugitives with murky pasts fleeing murderous pursuers across a fractured future Britain.
It’s a land of wilderness and often radioactive ruins, with remnants of humanity in scattered walled towns huddling for protection against crazed, cannibalistic Tainted roaming the woods and ruthlessly culling anyone with even minor mutations under the direction of magisterial Faith Houses. Scarlett McCain, professional thief, initially thinks the uncommonly persistent, bowler-hatted gunmen are after her for her last bank robbery—but soon realizes their quarry is actually Albert Browne, a strangely secretive and ingenuous lad she impulsively pulled from a blown-up bus. What makes him so valuable? The answer, coming through hails of gunfire, massive explosions, narrow escapes galore, and encounters with terrifying monsters (not all of them nonhuman) on the way to a desperate climactic struggle in the immense concrete archipelago of London revolves around a secret prison where children with special mental abilities are kept, tortured, and trained for purposes unknown. If Scarlett turns out to be formidable in the crunch and Albert not so much, by the end the two have not only bonded, but proven to have complementary abilities that bid fair to serve them well in future exploits. The vivid setting, rapid-fire dialogue, and nonstop action will propel readers through this raucous, rousing rumble. The cast presents White.
A blast for action fans, with potential for a long run. (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-43036-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists.
Princess Grace of Merryland needs rescuing again, forcing two young knights-in-training to face a series of challenges, from hungry cave sharks to a minotaur named Chad.
Actually, Princess Grace is perfectly capable of rescuing herself—again: see Once Upon a Tim (2022)—except that this time, kidnappers have stashed her in a room that’s locked and bolted on the outside…and in the middle of a maze billed, supposedly, as “the most complex and dastardly labyrinth in the world.” So it is that former peasants Tim and his more capable friend Bull—otherwise known as Belinda when she’s not disguised as a boy—plunge into a mess of dark and bewildering tunnels, armed with a ball of twine provided by the surprisingly sapient village idiot Ferkle, to face a series of deadly threats…though the most legendary of all turns out to be an amiable monster with the body of a bull and the head of, well, a dude. Throughout Gibbs’ lighthearted, laugh-out-loud tale, Curtis supplies proper notes of farce or stark terror as appropriate in flurries of line drawings that present most of the humans and the monsters with human features as White, though Belinda appears to present as Black. Along the way, Tim adds educational value to his narrative by flagging and then pausing to define vocabulary-building words like laborious and vexing.
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9928-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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