Readers who get a gas from such relentlessly fart-sical humor will come away with aching cheeks.
Lunchroom burritos fuel superpowers in a series blastoff aimed at alimentary readers.
When the disappearance of his homemade pickles-and-sauerkraut sandwich forces him to buy lunch (“Horrified gasps erupted around the table”), Darren Stonkadopolis proceeds shortly afterward to issue a “burrito blooper from below the belt” so fiery that his seat melts. The widely feared Five-Bean Burritos cause different but equally powerful effects in three fellow students at Harry Buttz Elementary School. Who is stealing lunches, and why? Can Darren and the others learn to control their vicious vapors and get to the bottom of the mystery? It doesn’t take long to sniff out the culprit—Harry Buttz II, noxious grandscion of Buttzville’s founders—and (literally) poot paid to his scheme to steal a magical butt scratcher that will spread his itchy family curse to the whole town. Illustrations are frequent but were not seen in finished form.
Readers who get a gas from such relentlessly fart-sical humor will come away with aching cheeks. (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236631-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Like Sam with those hot dogs, readers eager to snap up any dino-story will make quick work of this tongue-in-cheek romp.
The appearance of a live T. Rex near a fossil dig kicks off a wild round of dino-antics in this series kickoff from an Eisner Award–winning comics writer.
Hardly has young Mike donned his high-tech, solar-powered hoodie—a present from his paleontologist dad—than he’s running into Shannon, a mysterious girl wielding awesome futuristic devices, and running in panic from a hungry T. Rex he decides, in a less frantic moment, to name Sam. Secretive about her origins, Shannon enlists Mike, whom she dubs “Dino-Mike” (she herself goes by the less punchy moniker “Triceratops Shannon”), to help her steal a hot dog truck and lure the monster into a force field cage so that it can be sent back to the Cretaceous. Though ultimately successful, the mission is not only complicated by continuing interference from rascally dinosaur collector Jurassic Jeff, but capped, in a closing stunner, with unmistakable evidence that “Sam” was actually “Samantha.” Franco strews his lickety-split escapade with cartoons featuring wide-eyed figures viewed, often, from dramatic angles, leaves loose ends aplenty for sequels, and tacks on a dino-glossary and a set of T. Rex facts at the end.
Like Sam with those hot dogs, readers eager to snap up any dino-story will make quick work of this tongue-in-cheek romp. (Science fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4342-9631-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
A pleaser for young swashbucklers.
It’s living pirates vs. the other sort when ghost buccaneers repeatedly ransack the town of Dull-on-Sea.
First met as picture-book Pirates Next Door (2012), the nautical Jolley-Rogers family sails back into view in a multichapter yarn—responding to young pirate-loving ex-neighbor Matilda’s plea for help. It seems that every full moon brings dead Cap’n Twirlybeard and his knavish crew ashore in search of both plunder and a certain long lost key. According to Grandpa Rogers, only unlocking the sea chest that contains their scurvy souls can scupper the attacks. Can Matilda and her piratical friend Jim Lad find the missing key, keep it out of Twirlybeard’s clutches, and sneak aboard the spectral pirate ship Black Rat to open the chest at last? Duddle punctuates his larger-than-average prose with theatrical verse (“Some say we’re cursed, some say we’re dead! / We’re in search of a key as you sleep in bed!”) and tucks in plenty of elaborately detailed monochrome illustrations featuring a likewise monochrome cast of comically clueless white landlubbers and leering corsairs in classic pirate garb. A rousingly melodramatic face-off ends as it should, whereupon the Jolley-Rogers sail off once again…and into the clutches of a trio of witchy “sea hags” in the co-published next episode, The Jolley-Rogers and the Cave of Doom. Now, it’s Matilda’s turn to come to the rescue.
A pleaser for young swashbucklers. (glossary) (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8910-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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