Not for babies or toddlers but maybe for middle-graders in the gross-joke phase or perhaps a house-warming gift for a friend...
When a couple moves into a new home, neighbors stop by to welcome them.
As the book starts, a young couple (he with pale skin and red hair, she with ever-so-slightly darker skin and brown hair) open the door to their new home. They are pleased to have “this great new house.” One by one their neighbors show up and enter the house. Some come bearing gifts, such as the pregnant black woman who arrives with fruit or the white baker who’s baked a three-tiered cake. There is also a bodybuilder, a clown, a three-person band, a cowboy on his horse, a basketball player, a nurse, a cop, and even a pirate with a peg leg, hook hand, and parrot. (Of these enumerated, only the black basketball player and the brown-skinned policewoman appear not to be white.) The house is filling up, but the visitors are still arriving. Eventually a giant nose shows up and with a giant (and rather disgusting) “Ah… / CHOOO!” sneezes everyone away. As the couple cleans the plentiful green snot up they decide this might not be the place for them after all. The colorful illustrations have a quirky goofiness to them, but it is hard to see who the intended audience for this board book may be. With not a child in sight, or even a child-oriented topic (aside from the snot), it is clearly not a book for babies despite the format.
Not for babies or toddlers but maybe for middle-graders in the gross-joke phase or perhaps a house-warming gift for a friend with a strong stomach…? (Board book. 10 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-938073-93-9
Page Count: 60
Publisher: McSweeney's McMullens
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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