For all its good intentions, terrifyingly mediocre.
Mary Shelley’s classic gets a colorful but clumsy app treatment.
How to make this legendary horror story appealing for young readers? The creators of this app emphasize moody sounds (thunderstorms are abundant) and splashy line art that makes Frankenstein’s monster eerie but unintimidating—indeed, the creature looks a little cartoonish. But problems abound here, starting with the story itself. The default language for the app, created by a Brazilian company, is Portuguese, and the English version reads like a poor translation, full of inelegant phrasing and the occasional ungrammatical tangle. (“My professor would go on saying if mankind is able to name the stars, forge lightning and control the tides, it's because at some point their.”) The plot is loyal to the original, tracking the doctor and monster’s travels through Europe and to the North Pole, but it’s an artless retelling, thick with plot summary and spasms of melodrama. One wonders why they did not simply abridge Shelley's original, public-domain text. The obvious opportunities to interact with the app are limited and not especially stimulating: open a letter, unroll a map. The not-so-obvious opportunities border on comical: Readers can move around a specimen jar containing a human kidney, and clicking on Dr. Frankenstein’s head on one page makes him lament, “No, no, no.” On another page, tapping the monster’s head elicits a “bwah-ha-ha!” cackle, replacing any chance of scares with B-movie hokum.
For all its good intentions, terrifyingly mediocre. (iPad storybook app. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Yellow + Blue
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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