A knee-slapper of a debut featuring a narrator who is rather less than 99 percent reliable but 100 percent engaging.
Reality occasionally manages to force its way into a brash young motor mouth’s 1895 account of chills and thrills at a remote Michigan logging camp.
Scarcely has Stan noted the arrival of fearsomely strict granny Cora than he’s being dragged away from his small town to the woods. There, in his mind anyway, loups-garous lurk in the shadows, rough lumberjacks conceal horrific past crimes, and Scary Geri, a slightly older cousin bent on becoming a doctor, waits to “welcome” him. Being both accident-prone and gifted with a hyperactive imagination, Stan falls victim to a string of frights as well as pranks perpetrated by a mysterious mischief-maker. These barely leave him time to pen imaginary letters from his deserter father, absorb the shocking news that his mother has asked for and been granted a divorce, and add wisecrack alterations to the 19th-century ads and other scrapbook clippings that appear here on nearly every spread. DeCamp also saddles Stan with an inability to tell whether he’s keeping his frank opinions to himself or muttering them aloud, and since there are no textual cues, he and readers alike tend to find out which at the same time. It’s a disorienting device, though Stan’s hasty attempts to back and fill add further comedy to his headlong narrative. In the end, it’s back to town and school, with suitors welcome or otherwise trailing after his mother. The author saves the identity of the prankster as a final delicious surprise.
A knee-slapper of a debut featuring a narrator who is rather less than 99 percent reliable but 100 percent engaging. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-39044-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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