Here’s hoping the next installment has the depth and creativity science fiction should deliver.
Bob, a human boy, and Beep, an ET, have adventures in space.
After answering a multiple-choice test solely with “C,” Bob accidentally receives the highest test score on the planet and is invited to Astro Elementary, a school in space—which, according to Bob, is “THE MOST TERRIFYING PLACE EVER!” The spot illustrations (credited by narrator Bob to Beep) portray Bob and the other human characters as light-skinned, including Bob’s female classmate Lani—whom he appears to like, though he won’t admit it. (On the cover, he appears to have light brown skin, however.) When he answers a knock at the airlock door, Bob finds Beep, an extraterrestrial separated from his family, who adopts Bob as his “Bob-mother.” Bob chronicles their adventures as “splogs” addressed to the Kids of the Past; the first is a field trip to Pluto. When Bob foolishly gets his tongue stuck on the dwarf planet’s surface, he’s saved by Lani’s quick thinking, even as she laments the foolishness of “Boys.” Similarly shallow and ridiculous high jinks take up the remainder of the book. While the episodic plot and minimal science could be forgiven given the early-chapter-book audience, the fact that the future—and space—holds the same gender assumptions that plague the here and now is more than unfortunate.
Here’s hoping the next installment has the depth and creativity science fiction should deliver. (Science fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8853-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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