KIRKUS REVIEW
When the blame for monstrous destruction lands on Hamstersaurus Rex, Sam must clear his tiny, half-dino buddy’s name.
Bully Kiefer “Beefer” Vanderkoff has been expelled from Horace Hotwater Middle School, and as Hamster Monitor, Sam gets to care for his class pet: a mutated, junk-food–obsessed hamster/dinosaur hybrid. All’s well…until the school is visited by rodential destruction on a mass scale and Hammie is the only possible culprit in everyone’s eyes. Everyone, that is, except Sam, who, while filming Chinchillazilla vs. MechaChinchillazilla (starring Hammie, of course), is attacked by a 12-foot-tall squirrel. Sam discovers that someone is controlling Squirrel Kong (his money’s on Beefer), and Sam has to prove it in order to save Hammie from being sent away to the Irma Bergstrom Memorial Home for Troubled Small Pets. When this seems impossible, Sam teams up with several former nemeses to expose the real culprit. Can he do it before a classmate tries to claim a $300 reward for information on Hammie’s whereabouts or before Squirrel Kong destroys the whole town? O’Donnell’s sequel to Hammie’s eponymous first outing (2016) is as goofball as the first. Dotted with Miller’s black-and-white cartoon illustrations—in which Sam is depicted as white, with classmates of various skin tones—it’s sure to please those who enjoyed Hammie and Sam’s first adventure.
The “2” on the spine and the cliffhanger ending indicate more genetically modified fun to come—hurrah. (Science fiction. 8-12)
