Good, loony science-fiction fun.
Earth is again in danger from the galaxy’s most vile criminals. Can the team of STEM summer campers called the Extraordinary Terrestrials save all?
In series opener Galaxy’s Most Wanted (2014), Kevin, Tara, TJ, Warner, and their unfortunately shrunken friend, extraterrestrial cyborg cop Klyk, trounced outer-space criminal Mim, whom the kids inadvertently called to Earth with the galactoscope they invented. Now, Mim’s cronies, Zouric and Nuzz, have arrived. After freeze-bombing the camp, they set about taking over the planet with nanotech mind control. The kids escape but soon lose their new ally, Marcy, recruited from the girls’ soccer camp next door. Can they escape a brainwashed army of reptilian soldiers, find their comic-book–writer idol (who presciently creates comics detailing the dangers they face), and save the world? Kloepfer’s second humorous sci-fi adventure turns on the action on the first page and does a good job sustaining it all the way through. Edwards’ goggle-eyed, goofy line drawings extend the fun (final art not seen). Readers could actually skip the first book, which was slow to start, and begin here. The satisfying conclusion nicely sets up Volume 3, likely to be a less-terrestrial escapade. Fans of Kloepfer’s Zombie Chasers series will find this outing less gross but just as imaginative.
Good, loony science-fiction fun. (Science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-223104-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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