Joyfully chaotic.
An unremarkable 13-year-old deputy Gatekeeper must leave her post stamping blue travel applications and pink customs declarations when a catastrophe threatens all of the worlds.
Lucy loves being organized, which makes her supremely well-suited for her job at the end of the world, at the door leading from her world of Southeast to the neighboring East. She knows that she’s not particularly clever or interesting, and she worries that she got this job because her well-connected parents pulled some strings, but nevertheless she loves working for the cranky, white-haired old Gatekeeper. She doesn’t want any trouble, so it’s all the more terrible when the Gatekeeper disappears and the door to East jams shut—right after a strange boy tumbles through it. Arthur, a bespectacled 15-year-old, hadn’t even known there were other worlds besides his own East (home of exotic places such as Sacramento, Vladivostok, and Auckland). Together, Lucy and Arthur begin a quest to tell the surely trustworthy authorities about the missing Gatekeeper and the broken door. Along with grumpy Rosemary, deputy of another missing gatekeeper—isn’t she?—they unravel a plot that threatens commerce and travel across all eight worlds. The characters are assumed white and have names that evoke classic English-language literature. With its low-key comedy and grace notes such as bees that communicate by spelling, the book recalls earlier adventures by Diana Wynne Jones and Eva Ibbotson.
Joyfully chaotic. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-236830-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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