The icing on the exploding birthday cake are the many pages from Desmond’s notebook with instructions on duplicating his...
Will monster maven Desmond Pucket get to ride the awesome, animatronic-enhanced Mountain Full of Monsters roller coaster with dreamy Tina Schimsky?
No. Mr. Needles, head of Cloverfield Memorial Junior High’s disciplinary office, has it in for Desmond, even on the field trip to Crab Shell Pier amusement park. Desmond and his best friend, Ricky, ditch Needles, but the guy comes back like a bad rash. Desmond ends up having to go on his dream ride with Mr. Needles—repeatedly. Then Desmond learns that the ride is scheduled for demolition at the end of the summer. He vows to raise money to save the animatronic monsters, but what can one kid do? What he does best: scare kids…for which their siblings will gladly pay cash. Will Desmond be able to raise enough to get the park’s manager to let him save the monsters from destruction? In a mixture of comic panels, doodlelike spot illustrations and text, Tatulli continues his chronicle of sixth-grade special-effects expert Desmond in a funny and cheerfully gross tale of perseverance and friendship that is realistic and wacky all at once. Other secrets come to light over the course of the story, and fans will rejoice that more adventures are on the way.
The icing on the exploding birthday cake are the many pages from Desmond’s notebook with instructions on duplicating his scary successes. (Humor. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4494-3549-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
