Like fast food, this is quick and goes down easy.
When fast-food-frenzied monsters descend, only one hero can save the day.
Bespectacled Carlton Crumple is relentlessly terrorized by his mulleted older brother, Milt, and grows up fearful of everything. Talking to his best friend, Lulu, Carlton has a sudden insight, deciding to stop being scared and to become a creature catcher. He lands a job at Chubbzy Cheeseburgers but is sternly reprimanded when he replaces the ketchup with his superspicy Awesome Chili Sauce. When a horde of fast-food–obsessed (but not-too-scary) monsters attack, Carlton Crumple, Creature Catcher, and his special sauce may be key to stopping them. This middle-grade graphic offering is the first in a proposed series (with a promised second volume entitled Tater Invaders). Writer and illustrator Fremont’s animation background is highly visible here, with fast pacing, quirky characters, and ample silliness. Driven by its jet-fueled plotting, young readers careen from one side-splitting scene to the next as the simply wrought, full-color (courtesy of Matison) cartoons rocket sequences along. Those who enjoy complex characters may be at a loss, but those who want their humor to have a fast and furious velocity should be right at home here, making this perfect for fans of series like Chris Schweizer’s The Creeps or Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady. Carlton appears to be white; secondary characters display various skin tones.
Like fast food, this is quick and goes down easy. (Graphic fantasy. 7-11)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64595001-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Lighthearted spook with a heaping side of silliness—and hair.
Fifth graders get into a hairy situation.
After an unnamed narrator’s full-page warning, readers dive right into a Wolver Hollow classroom. Mr. Noffler recounts the town legend about how, every Oct. 19, residents don fake mustaches and lock their doors. As the story goes, the late Bockius Beauregard was vaporized in an “unfortunate black powder incident,” but, somehow, his “magnificent mustache” survived to haunt the town. Once a year, the spectral ’stache searches for an exposed upper lip to rest upon. Is it real or superstition? Students Parker and Lucas—sole members of the Midnight Owl Detective Agency—decide to take the case and solve the mustache mystery. When they find that the book of legends they need for their research has been checked out from the library, they recruit the borrower: goth classmate Samantha von Oppelstein. Will the three of them be enough to take on the mustache and resolve its ghostly, unfinished business? Whether through ridiculous plot points or over-the-top descriptions, the comedy keeps coming in this first title in McGee’s new Night Frights series. A generous font and spacing make this quick-paced, 13-chapter story appealing to newly confident readers. Skaffa’s grayscale cartoon spot (and occasional full-page) illustrations help set the tone and accentuate the action. Though neither race or skin color is described in the text, images show Lucas and Samantha as light-skinned and Parker as dark-skinned.
Lighthearted spook with a heaping side of silliness—and hair. (maps) (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8089-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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