Despite the meandering storyline, fans of the two previous slapstick adventures will eagerly welcome back Lupe and the...
The over-the-top lowriders Lupe, Elirio, and Flapjack are back with their gato, Genie.
This nostalgic journey back in time chronicles, in parallel stories, the moment the lives of the then escuincles—pipsqueaks—first intersected. They join together to help Lupe’s two mothers enter a car show, but Mamá Impala and Mamá Gazelle need the approval of the hosting car club. The bullies controlling the entire show, Los Matamoscas, make up arbitrary rules to keep the women out because everyone knows car clubs are for los machos. Lupe’s moms’ car must clear speed bumps without scraping, they must keep a 5-gallon jar of agua fresca from spilling while taking an entire lap, and any visible brush strokes on the paint job are grounds for disqualification. All is saved by Elirio’s pointy proboscis, Lupe’s quick thinking, and Flapjack’s slurping capacity. Raúl the Third’s signature style again frenetically populates the sepia pages with eye-catching detail that highlights lowrider humor and culture. Camper’s story, however, trips, snags, and hitches on too many densely worded moments of exposition. These asides, such as the recognition of Indigenous words in modern languages and the contributions of the art collective Asco, would have been more appropriately placed in the backmatter (where they are discussed again anyway) rather than in the middle of the narrative. Also, some scenes are unnecessarily drawn out, as in the case of the opening five and a half pages of gratuitous flatulence.
Despite the meandering storyline, fans of the two previous slapstick adventures will eagerly welcome back Lupe and the gang’s Spanish-infused exploits. (glossary, author’s notes, sources) (Graphic adventure. 9-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6315-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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