Pulpy thrills with a solid message.
In this follow-up to SuperDrew and the Secrets of Donhil Corp (2021), Andrew Stirling is still struggling to take down the evil company that’s controlling humanity with its modified-food, media, and lifestyle products.
Ultra-clever Drew is a self-described geek and an impulsive, justice-oriented inventor. Wearing arm and leg braces made with advanced technology for a bone condition, he uses his tech to perform feats that come close to superheroism. After uncovering Donhil Corporation’s sinister machinations with best friend Jazz Liu-Wen, an intrepid investigative journalist, the teens team up with two employees to take it down from the inside. They discover that the truth of Donhil’s crimes is more horrifying than they ever imagined. The story is fully committed to breakneck video game–esque spy adventures, and it wastes no time in dropping readers into the action, with plenty of major set pieces that are sometimes repetitive and overburdened with pop culture references. For every obstacle they face, Drew and company have a gadget and an ingenious plan, but the escapism comes with a lesson about standing up for people’s autonomy at any cost. While the portrayal of Drew’s internalized ableism is sometimes muddled, his experience of disability is interesting: He pushes past his own limits but still faces realistic consequences. His exciting tech can’t erase his struggles with his own self-image, but he still holds his own. Drew reads white; Jazz is cued Chinese American.
Pulpy thrills with a solid message. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781958051566
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Snowy Wings Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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