A reading of the first book is a must in order to fully enjoy and appreciate this unpretentiously lesson-drenched sequel....
Welcome back to the Great Rapscott School for Girls of Busy Parents!
The fall semester’s lesson: How to Go Far in Life; the goal: to earn the Great Rapscott Medal for Reaching The Top. As the offbeat Ms. Rapscott reasons, “you cannot reach The Top unless you go far,” but you must also fail several times in the attempt by making mistakes on purpose. However, there is only one place to begin: The Bottom. This time, Bea, Mildred, Annabelle, and Dahlia are present and accounted for, while Fay, having “failed in the best possible way,” is accidentally delivered to The Top on her way to school. With her signature quirky logic, Ms. Rapscott also teaches the girls How to Celebrate a Birthday and How to Make a Bad Day Good. As in the first book, Ms. Rapscatt’s Girls (2015), the emphasis is on building a tone that combines the merry and the Gothic rather than on deep character development The novel hits a pothole with its lack of racial diversity; there’s a brief reference to former students being of “every color, size, and shape,” but hazy descriptions support inferences that the characters are white, an impression reinforced by the black-and-white illustrations. A spot of body diversity labels Mildred as “plump,” but her fatness is a source of shame.
A reading of the first book is a must in order to fully enjoy and appreciate this unpretentiously lesson-drenched sequel. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3824-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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