As flavorful as the strongest Irish stout, though equally an acquired taste.
A 15-year-old recruit becomes the newest faerie-fighter in Ireland in the first of a series, Lennon’s debut.
After the imprisonment of his parents, curators at the National Museum of Ireland wrongfully accused of stealing the Bog Man by shady art dealer Lord Desmond Dooley, young Ronan Boyle is taken in by a sympathetic member of the Galway garda as an intern in the evidence department. Being skinny, Boyle is summoned to a castle ruin to rescue a changeling baby that a leprechaun has thrown down an oubliette. His success leads to his recruitment by the Garda Special Unit of Tir Na Nog, the Irish land of faeries. After a required course of study that includes tin whistle, he embarks on a series of adventures that eventually point in the general direction of the Bog Man and his parents’ fate. They don’t arrive there, but they’re heading that way, and it’s the vagueness of Boyle’s quest and the plot as a whole that are the novel’s primary weaknesses. Dry Irish humor and relentless wackiness are its primary strengths; with lines like “Pat Finch is what a heart attack would look like if it could walk around eating fish-and-chips and saying terrible things about Roscommon Football Club’s starting lineup,” the joy is in the journey, not the destination. The cast is default white, with diversity mostly of the nonhuman variety.
As flavorful as the strongest Irish stout, though equally an acquired taste. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3491-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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