A sweet and silly expansion of a popular brand.
Cuphead and his pals go to a carnival.
Cuphead makes his middle-grade debut in this silly symphony inspired by the popular run-and-gun video game. It’s Elder Kettle’s birthday, and Cuphead is eager to make the day one that will never be forgotten. With the help of Mughead and Ms. Chalice, Cuphead hopes to find a wonderful gift for Elder Kettle. However, a magical carnival beckons, sucking the trio in with promises of games, rides, and fun. The carnival serves as a backdrop for a series of absurd events, and Cuphead does his best to protect his money from the bamboozlers and tricksters desperate to get their hands on his cash. The book features illustrations by Studio MDHR’s Miller that evoke the golden age of American animation, when Walt Disney and Looney Tunes were at their peaks. The book’s tone blends the smirking asides of Tex Avery (“Ah, the bouncing ball—where would sing-alongs be without it?”) with the heartfelt aw-shucks emotions of early Mickey Mouse cartoons. Fans of the Cuphead video game will delight, but even those completely unfamiliar will find plenty to enjoy here. The book incorporates a hide-and-seek game, the backmatter featuring two pages of characters and objects that readers are encouraged to flip through and find in the backgrounds of illustrations. Some are vexingly difficult.
A sweet and silly expansion of a popular brand. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45654-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Highly amusing.
The incompetent parents from The Willoughbys (2008) find themselves thawed by global warming.
Henry and Frances haven’t aged since the accident that buried them in snow and froze them for 30 years in the Swiss Alps. Their Rip van Winkle–ish return is archly comedic, with the pair, a medical miracle, realizing (at last!) how much they’ve lost and how baffled they are now. Meanwhile, their eldest son, Tim, is grown and in charge of his adoptive father’s candy empire, now threatened with destitution by a congressional ban on candy (opposed by an unnamed Bernie Sanders). He is father to 11-year-old Richie, who employs ad-speak whenever he talks about his newest toys, like a remote-controlled car (“The iconic Lamborghini bull adorns the hubcaps and hood”). But Richie envies Winston Poore, the very poor boy next door, who has a toy car carved for him by his itinerant encyclopedia-salesman father. Winston and his sister, Winifred, plan to earn money for essentials by offering their services as companions to lonely Richie while their mother dabbles, spectacularly unsuccessfully, in running a B&B. Lowry’s exaggerated characters and breezy, unlikely plot are highly entertaining. She offers humorous commentary both via footnotes advising readers of odd facts related to the narrative and via Henry and Frances’ reentry challenges. The threads of the story, with various tales of parents gone missing, fortunes lost or never found, and good luck in the end, are gathered most satisfactorily and warmheartedly.
Highly amusing. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-42389-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Elegiac and hopeful.
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out.
When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.
Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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