Fans will be glad Kung Pow has at least two more adventures on the way.
Fowladelphia is under attack by Dr. Screech. Can Kung Pow Chicken save the day?
Gordon Blue may appear to be an average, ordinary second-grade chicken, but not long ago, he and his brother, Benedict, fell into a vat of toxic sludge in their uncle’s lab and emerged with superchicken powers. Gordon and Benny now have secret superidentities: Kung Pow Chicken and Egg Drop. In series opener Let’s Get Cracking (2014), they put Granny Goosebumps away for her evil plot to make money off of featherless chickens. Now, they have to keep their secret identities secret (especially from their mom), and nosy reporter Sam Snood is trying to expose them. When opera singer Honey Comb is chicken-napped by Dr. Screech during a performance, Kung Pow and Egg Drop crack into action. Dr. Screech gets away. Unfortunately, Sam Snood snaps some pictures and insinuates that Kung Pow is in cahoots with Dr. Screech! The boys have to enlist Uncle Quack’s help to hunt down the nefarious evildoer. Can they save the opera and Fowladelphia and clear their names? Marko’s second of four Kung Pow Chicken high-interest, fast reads for the just-ready-for-chapters reader continues Gordon’s adventures nicely, with plenty of punny action in the colorful mix of comic panels and short paragraphs of text.
Fans will be glad Kung Pow has at least two more adventures on the way. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 5-7)Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-61064-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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