The twins’ quick-paced, action-packed journey will sweep readers right along with them.
Twin boys, Starn and Esper, live in Orchard Territory, a grim place where most animals, insects, and plants have died, suffocated under ash from a catastrophic series of volcanic eruptions.
The white boys’ mother and sister have died of a new illness, and their father has become one of the workers that painstakingly pollinate trees by hand. The new world is run by the crude, small-minded Sagittars, everything strictly controlled and enforced with harsh punishment. On a dare, Starn opens their sister’s sealed room and finds a book handwritten by their great-aunt telling of gold on one of the islands all citizens are forbidden to visit. Starn’s obsession with flying spurs him to design and build a glider in secret so that he and his brother can capture the treasure and return to liberate their father from his relentless work. After some close calls of discovery, the boys set off on their adventure. Mills perfectly contrasts the two halves of the story, using a vocabulary unique to Orchard to describe that world and completely new ways for the boys to describe the islands’ vivid, unfamiliar flora. Heavy concerns—bad government, environmental challenges—are compassionately woven into a story with Mills’ poetic lyricism showing through. Also of note is Lauren O’Neill’s gorgeous cover illustration.
The twins’ quick-paced, action-packed journey will sweep readers right along with them. (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-910411-55-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little Island/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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