A gold-plated chain puller for readers in alimentary grades.
In a tale aswirl with potty humor, a young hero plunges into danger to save his town and the world from an evil sewer—er, supervillain.
In days of yore Nitro City was protected from clogs and their nefarious perpetrators by the likes of Drainiac Magee and other costumed members of the Plumbers’ League of UnNaturally Gifted Exceptionals—all of whom were declared outlaws when the Ironwater company took over the job of sewer management. But now a rising tide of mysterious leaks, overflows, and mutant subterranean monsters promises to turn the town’s massively popular annual Burrito Festival into Plumbageddon. Enter 13-year-old Sully Stringfellow, a natural genius with pipes and valves since birth. He’s more or less unfazed by encounters with pop-up washer weasels and a tentacled croctopus, and he’s john-on-the-spot (so to speak) when the time comes to trigger a former supervillain’s gigantic porcelain Death Flush. The ensuing “cyclo-toiletronic swirl” rockets Sully into Nitro City’s Underworld to expose Ironwater’s CEO as archvillain Human Waste. Dazzled to discover that the old “sewer soldiers” of P.L.U.N.G.E. are still around (his own grandpa turns out to be the legendary Midnight Flush), Sully gladly accepts an invitation into the fold as a new apprentice. Sully is depicted on the cover as white, and the rest of the cast appears to be white by default.
A gold-plated chain puller for readers in alimentary grades. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-51000-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
This can’t be the last we ever hear of the Legendary Alston Boys of the purely surreal Logan County—imaginative,...
Can this really be the first time readers meet the Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County? Cousins and veteran sleuths Otto and Sheed Alston show us that we are the ones who are late to their greatness.
These two black boys are coming to terms with the end of their brave, heroic summer at Grandma’s, with a return to school just right around the corner. They’ve already got two keys to the city, but the rival Epic Ellisons—twin sisters Wiki and Leen—are steadily gaining celebrity across Logan County, Virginia, and have in hand their third key to the city. No way summer can end like this! These young people are powerful, courageous, experienced adventurers molded through their heroic commitment to discipline and deduction. They’ve got their shared, lifesaving maneuvers committed to memory (printed in a helpful appendix) and ready to save any day. Save the day they must, as a mysterious, bendy gentleman and an oversized, clingy platypus have been unleashed on the city of Fry, and all the residents and their belongings seem to be frozen in time and place. Will they be able to solve this one? With total mastery, Giles creates in Logan County an exuberant vortex of weirdness, where the commonplace sits cheek by jowl with the utterly fantastic, and populates it with memorable characters who more than live up to their setting.
This can’t be the last we ever hear of the Legendary Alston Boys of the purely surreal Logan County—imaginative, thrill-seeking readers, this is a series to look out for. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-46083-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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