A fantastical blend of quirky characters and goofy adventures.
Olive’s move to a new school leads to friends, adventures, and greater self-confidence in this series opener.
Invisible at school and forgotten by her distracted parents, 12-year-old Olive Cobin Zang is lonely and drifting. Her only source of solace is memories of her loving grandmother’s wise words. So, when Olive’s parents transfer her to the Reforming Arts School, a Bay Area boarding school located in a former prison, she is ambivalent but curious. The school’s unusual approach includes both individual and group placement auditions. These challenges reward often-overlooked skills that Olive and four other idiosyncratic new students turn out to embody: creativity, teamwork, and reasoning. The new pod of five coalesces, exuberant upon learning that they will “join an elite force of specially trained operatives” and become the youngest group ever to go undercover and bring fresh ideas to solving crime. The self-styled Misfits have finally found their calling, but will it last? A crisis is unfolding: The villainous Bling King could keep the school’s main benefactor from attending the annual fundraiser, threatening the school’s existence as well as the Misfits’ own ambitions and newfound feelings of sanctuary. The straightforward storyline has more telling than showing, making it accessible to younger and reluctant readers. Readers will delight in the cartoonlike worldbuilding, zany capers, and plentiful and expressive illustrations. Olive is Chinese American and white; there’s racial diversity among the remaining cast.
A fantastical blend of quirky characters and goofy adventures. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781984830296
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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