Exemplary characters enliven a comical lunar romp.
A young troublemaker on Earth has a chance to be a hero on the moon when he and other colonists face a natural disaster in this middle-grade SF tale.
Byron Barnett’s stirring imagination—and a device he calls a “biomass transducer”—allow him mentally to visit the moon and converse with José Ignacio, a 12-inch toy robot he sees as 7 feet tall. But the Arizonan’s love of adventure sometimes clashes with his parents’ rules. When he defies parental orders and spends his Saturday spelunking, he gets stuck and needs police assistance. Now he’s in legal trouble for excessive use of emergency and utility services. To avoid a hefty fine and hard labor, the Barnetts accept the judge’s third sentence option, “corrective exile.” It’s on the moon, and the entire family can go, as Byron’s engineer father already has a job offer pending there. Along with his parents, the almost 10-year-old Byron and his older brother, Taji, make the move, and he’s soon taking the “lunar school bus” to school and sometimes exploring his new world on his own. But threatening everyone on the moon is an approaching white worm, a space phenomenon that’s part black hole, part wormhole, and all catastrophe. As meteoroids rain down on the moon’s surface, Byron tries rescuing the people, including his family, who missed the lunar evacuation. Huddles’ literary debut is a brisk, delightful story. Though Byron is the undisputed protagonist, each Barnett is well-established. For example, the Barnetts adopted Taji, who is Swedish Kenyan, as they had been friends with his late parents. The highlight, however, is the friendship between Byron and José Ignacio. Byron is unquestionably imagining their conversations, and the generally reluctant José Ignacio is his apparent conscience. Huddles caters to his younger middle-grade readers, defining some of the big words, providing occasional reminders that José Ignacio is a toy, and italicizing dialogue when people are speaking via space helmet intercom. The prose and action are fast-paced and often funny: A bus that swerves to avoid a crashing meteoroid contains passengers “of the screaming variety.” This book launches a prospective series featuring Byron, and the time-jump ending is a clear setup for a sequel.
Exemplary characters enliven a comical lunar romp.Pub Date: March 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0997085181
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Notable Kids Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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