While debut author Ormsbee’s use of language is laudable and the fantasy details are imaginative, they cannot compensate for...
Two things make 12-year-old orphan Lottie Fiske’s sad life happier: her friendship with Eliot and the magical apple tree near her boardinghouse.
Every year, Lottie receives birthday presents in a hole at the base of the tree—the exact presents she has requested. This year, Eliot is incurably ill, with just a few weeks to live, so she wishes for his recovery; that birthday, a white finch appears. One day Lottie discovers a sprite in her closet. Adelaide Wilfer takes her “root shooting” in the apple tree to another world layered below Lottie’s. Adelaide’s father is a healer (and the birthday gift–giver) working on medicine for the Otherwise Incurable. Lottie discovers she is a Halfling—half human and half sprite—and also is the Heir of Fiske, which seems to have some significance. When the cruel king of this world kidnaps Mr. Wilfer, Lottie, Adelaide, her brother, Oliver, and a halfling sprite-wisp named Fife journey to the castle to find Mr. Wilfer and the medicine for Eliot. The arduous journey involves magical creatures, a swamp of oblivion, strangling vines, travel through plague-ridden wisp territory and more. Lottie is spunky and likable; the interplay among the four travelers is engaging. Unfortunately, the protracted story introduces unexplained elements and has a weak, confusing ending.
While debut author Ormsbee’s use of language is laudable and the fantasy details are imaginative, they cannot compensate for the novel’s flaws. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1386-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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