Slice-of-life exploits mostly for fans of the first.
The Qwikpick Adventure Society files another official report on its members’ derring-do.
In their previous adventure, Lyle, Marilla and Dave visited the poop fountain just before the Crickenburg sewage plant was updated; that was one smelly escapade. Now, when they hear an electrician speak of a rat with a human face at the Bent Mountain Biological Station, they think they’ve found their next expedition. However, transportation is an issue, and their parents would never approve. They sign up for a rec-center trip to a hotel near Bent Mountain and make their way on foot to the station, which is closed for the season. When things go awry and all is revealed, Marilla’s strictly religious parents forbid her from participation in the Qwikpick Adventure Society. Could this really be the end of the society (and Lyle’s budding romance with Marilla)? Set in the year 2000 and presented as a typewritten report by Lyle, Angleberger’s second tale in a trilogy is less engaging and much less amusing than his Origami Yoda series. (The trilogy’s first volume also predates the folded-paper sage, having been originally published pseudonymously in 2007.) However, narrator Lyle and his friends are just as realistic as their origami-folding counterparts, and their adventure is much more true to life. Final art not seen.
Slice-of-life exploits mostly for fans of the first. (Adventure. 9-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1489-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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