Soaring, silly, and stocked with detectives and criminal masterminds…some of whom turn out to be both.
A giant flying passenger liner bound for Brazil provides plenty of opportunities for apprentice sleuth John Boarhog, ward of legendary detective Toadius McGee, to show his talents.
In a second romp characterized by the frame narrator as true (“I have once again changed only the facts I didn’t like”) if deliciously over-the-top, the 12-year-old gumshoe-in-training finds himself struggling not only to counter the latest scheme of renowned thief Polly “Pickles” Cronopolis, but to prove himself both to a delegation from the Society of Sleuths and to his infuriatingly secretive guardian, Toadius. Both tasks are complicated by the presence aboard the palatial and, as swashbuckling Capt. Amelia Cloudhopper ominously puts it, “uncrashable,” H.M.R.A.S. Boutielle of renowned criminal mastermind Shim-Sham, a monkey recently escaped from imprisonment in New York’s maximum security Central Park Zoo. Not to mention, following a string of riotous melees and misadventures, an attack by sky pirates capped by a collision with an iceberg. Along with adding a racially diverse assortment of new adult characters to the array of magicians and circus performers introduced in the opener, Phillips gives his brown-skinned protagonist several new young friends and allies, including fabulously wealthy White-presenting Aussie fanboy Wembley Quokkas (and his loving mums) and Kana Rai, a circus performer of Japanese descent. Stay tuned for further feats of deduction and encounters with more fiendishly clever crooks.
Soaring, silly, and stocked with detectives and criminal masterminds…some of whom turn out to be both. (Detective fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781645951087
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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