Gripping and thoughtful; readers will be left pondering their own connections to the past.
A time-travel adventure incorporates reflections on human nature in this middle-grade stand-alone.
With their mother in danger overseas, 12-year-old Will Menzies and his little brother, Jamie, are bundled off from the United States to Scotland to live with relatives. At the family’s ancestral castle, Will discovers his ability to look into the past…and, as Jamie impulsively learns, even to visit it. Will and his irrepressible cousin Nan are determined to rescue Jamie, but every trip into history brings greater dangers. Will is an immensely appealing protagonist—introspective and responsible yet sick with worry, anger, and guilt over his mother’s situation. The other characters (most of them Will’s Scottish relatives and ancestors and all white, like Will and Jamie) are more thinly drawn but still lively and likable. The historical chapters especially shine: Despite the hand-waving pseudo-scientific mechanics, the trio’s jaunts to the Middle Ages, Roman times, and even earlier are vividly realized, rich in well-chosen details, and charming and thrilling and gross and cruel where appropriate. (While never graphically explicit, the level of bloody violence sometimes clashes with the simple, almost naïve, illustrations.) These episodes are united by Will’s growing awareness of humanity’s tragic predilection toward fear and violence, along with its capacity for bravery and kindness. In a touching epilogue, he is able to bring his new understanding to reconciliation with his parents’ choices.
Gripping and thoughtful; readers will be left pondering their own connections to the past. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-11767-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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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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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