Plot-driven but weighed down by heavy-handed moralizing.
A multispecies squad of student explorers escapes numerous threats to life and limb in the trackless Fungal Jungle.
Switching to a hybrid format and aiming at younger readers, the creators of the Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo graphic novel series craft a ponderously didactic adventure in which new arrival Coop Cooperson demonstrates leadership qualities by mediating conflicts and keeping his nonhuman Dungeon Academy classmates together and on task in between brushes with toothy monsters and other narrow squeaks. The cast includes lots of monsters, not to mention a student body composed of imps, goblins, bugbears, and similar folk with silly names like Oggie Twinkelbark or Zeek Barfolamule Ghoulihan (the requisite bully). The tale takes a dismally familiar turn, however, when Coop, who reads as White, leads his team into an ambush by a reclusive tribe of small mushroom people who speak stilted English, at first threaten to cook and eat him, then end up kneeling before their savior after he slays a monstrous spider that was threatening them, a plot twist that unfortunately evokes racist tropes. (Rather than stay and be their god king, though, he nobly elects to return with his team to the academy and get a coveted Junior Dungeoneer badge.) The narrative passages, with layout designed to be accessible to new chapter book readers, are liberally strewn with grayscale cartoon scenes that offer frantic action and reaction shots as well as additional dialogue.
Plot-driven but weighed down by heavy-handed moralizing. (Illustrated fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66591-069-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
File under “laugh riot.”
A rogue spell-check program’s bid to transform all life-forms into that eminently useful office item, the paper clip, touches off a fresh round of lunar lunacy.
Predicated on the entirely reasonable premise that eliminating all spelling and grammar errors everywhere would logically lead to the necessity of exterminating carbon-based life in the universe, this third series entry combines high stakes with daffy banter and daring exploits. CheckMate—a chipper, jumped-up editing program—has invented the Transmogratron, a giant laser that will fulfill its ultimate goals in both the cyber world and “meatspace.” Facing challenges as random as prankster lunar unicorns and a disarmingly motherly Motherboard, scowling First Cat joins a motley crew of diversely carbon- and silicon-based allies, led by the pearlescent Queen of the Moon. They’re in a race to the finish—diverted occasionally by, for instance, a relentlessly punny comic-book interlude featuring a pair of literal and figurative Pool Sharks. They ultimately triumph thanks to teamwork and moxie. Following a celebratory party and toasts to “new friends…and steadfast comrades” (and, of course, “MEOW”), the story’s energetic, brightly colored panels close with a reveal of the next volume. (“I always hate it when comics end by announcing a sequel. SO CRINGE!” declares an authorial stand-in.) It can’t come too soon.
File under “laugh riot.” (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780063315280
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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