Free-wheeling follies with satiric digs aplenty.
Trouble comes to Trubble Town even before all the grown-ups are abducted by alien Berrymanalows.
Sharing with its predecessor, Squirrel Do Bad (2021), a decidedly free-associational style of plotting, cartoonist Pastis’ newest pits young Wendy the Wanderer and silent orphan Milo against numerous foes, from evil tycoon Moneybags McGibbons to a bunch of opportunistic children who elect themselves town bosses after their empty-headed parents vanish thanks to not one but two rival sets of lounge singers from the stars (the other being the Waynenootonians). In a random (if increasingly destructive) series of mishaps and catastrophes featuring, for example, a wrestling match between costumed ex–civil servant Nutman and town propagandist Scribby Von Scrivener atop a giant banana, the town ends up leveled…but at least both the useless grown-ups and the bad kids are sent away together on a long trip, the aliens are driven off before they can perform, and Milo and Wendy are left to rebuild with the few remaining residents, mostly animals. In the appropriately manic art, the aliens resemble vegetables dressed, in some of the more frightening panels, as Elvis impersonators, while Wendy, flaunting a mop of purple hair, and the rest of the dot-eyed human cast present in a subtle range of skin colors.
Free-wheeling follies with satiric digs aplenty. (Graphic humor. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9614-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits.
Who needs dragons when there are Terrible Lizards to be fought?
Having recklessly boasted to King Arthur and the court that he’d slain 40 dragons, Sir Erec can hardly refuse when Merlin offers him more challenging foes…and so it is that in no time (so to speak), Erec, with bookish Sir Hector, the silent and enigmatic Black Knight, and blustering Sir Bors with his thin but doughty squire, Mel, in tow, are hewing away at fearsome creatures sporting natural armor and weapons every bit as effective as knightly ones. Happily, while all the glorious mashing and bashing leads to awesome feats aplenty—who would suspect that a ravening T. Rex could be decked by a well-placed punch to the jaw?—when the dust settles neither bloodshed nor permanent injury has been dealt to either side. Better yet, not even the stunning revelation that two of the Three Stooges–style bumblers aren’t what they seem (“Anyone else here a girl?”) keeps the questers from developing into a well-knit team capable of repeatedly saving one another’s bacon. Phelan endows the all-white human cast with finely drawn, eloquently expressive faces but otherwise works in a loose, movement-filled style, pitting his clanking crew against an almost nonstop onslaught of toothy monsters in a monochrome mix of single scenes and occasional wordless sequential panels.
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268623-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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