Returning series fans will appreciate this largely satisfying wrap-up.
SuperDrew is back and ready for the final showdown against the Donhil Corporation.
Drew and his allies, including his equally nerdy family and his friends—journalist Jazz, programmer Ward, and maker Tay—are facing the terrible reality that they’re the only ones still awake in a world put into a forced sleep by Donhil. They must break into company headquarters to foil the CEO, Chatana Lungowe, who’s imprisoned creative geniuses’ minds for her own selfish ends. Pierson maintains a strong pace through numerous spycraft set pieces, as Drew and company make their way through Donhil, encountering clever traps. The work highlights themes of societal justice and sinister capitalism, and Drew’s expanded cohort also brings a sense of cohesion and teamwork that makes this outing stronger interpersonally than the previous entry. The action still tends toward the repetitive, however, and the explicitly spelled-out lessons and Drew’s inspirational inner monologues feel heavy-handed. Drew, who’s dealing with a broken arm on top of his existing disability, which requires him to use braces, is allowed to perform his superheroics without any moralizing about taking physical risks. Offered the chance to be cured by Ms. Lungowe, he continues to grapple with internalized ableism before reaching a place of disability positivity. In a cast where most characters present white (Jazz reads Chinese American), the world’s most evil person has names cuing South Asian and African heritage.
Returning series fans will appreciate this largely satisfying wrap-up. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781958051900
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Snowy Wings Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
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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