High nonsense that almost lives up to its potential—but not quite
The day before Fred’s 13th birthday, she enters a magical world on an adventure that pays homage to classic children’s fantasy.
Fred and her mother have moved four times in six years, and Fred is frankly sick and tired of it. Angry at her mom though she may be, however, when Fred sees her mother step into an enormous paper lantern and vanish, she still plunges to the rescue. So it is that this young white girl finds herself locked in a dungeon with an elephant called Downer, in a land where much is illegal under “THE ESSENTIAL AND VERY GOOD AND NO ONE CAN DISAGREE WITH RAT RULE 79”: no keeping time, no getting older or wiser, and absolutely no birthday parties. Also no peanut butter. Downer wants to rescue the Rat Queen, Fred wants to rescue her mother, and a mongoose named Gogo needs to earn money to take care of her 17 children. The Land of Impossibility (depicted incompletely on a “topo-illogical” map) is a metaphor-heavy dreamscape evocative of The Phantom Tollbooth, while its magical animals speak with a combination of pedantry and nonsense paralleling that found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Two-color illustrations similarly evoke historical styles. Snarky cleverness and famous paradoxes charm, but they are weakened by too-quick resolutions to both major and minor plot threads. Troublingly, a character’s depression is treated as a matter of personal choice.
High nonsense that almost lives up to its potential—but not quite . (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63206-099-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits.
Who needs dragons when there are Terrible Lizards to be fought?
Having recklessly boasted to King Arthur and the court that he’d slain 40 dragons, Sir Erec can hardly refuse when Merlin offers him more challenging foes…and so it is that in no time (so to speak), Erec, with bookish Sir Hector, the silent and enigmatic Black Knight, and blustering Sir Bors with his thin but doughty squire, Mel, in tow, are hewing away at fearsome creatures sporting natural armor and weapons every bit as effective as knightly ones. Happily, while all the glorious mashing and bashing leads to awesome feats aplenty—who would suspect that a ravening T. Rex could be decked by a well-placed punch to the jaw?—when the dust settles neither bloodshed nor permanent injury has been dealt to either side. Better yet, not even the stunning revelation that two of the Three Stooges–style bumblers aren’t what they seem (“Anyone else here a girl?”) keeps the questers from developing into a well-knit team capable of repeatedly saving one another’s bacon. Phelan endows the all-white human cast with finely drawn, eloquently expressive faces but otherwise works in a loose, movement-filled style, pitting his clanking crew against an almost nonstop onslaught of toothy monsters in a monochrome mix of single scenes and occasional wordless sequential panels.
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268623-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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