This won’t “fry everyone’s burgers,” but its audience exists.
No matter the sport, Steve, middle schooler at Spiro T. Agnew Middle School, is the undisputed King of the Bench.
Steve and his friends, diminutive and cryptically psychic Joey and gassy, big-boned Carlos, like sports but aren’t interested in the prospect of being tackled. They prefer to watch their local NFL “doormat” team, the Goodfellow Goons, practice, sharing the bleachers with superfan Billionaire Bill, who lives in the stadium. Bill offers Steve an ancient Nintendo 64 controller in exchange for Steve’s Eskimo Pie, along with the advice “Control your own life.” After several experiments, Steve discovers that the controller seems to control people. When star athlete Jimmy Jimerino tricks the trio into volunteering for the sparsely populated school football team, Steve uses the controller to give the Mighty Plumbers a winning season, but each time he uses it someone gets hurt. Is the controller magic? Cursed? Will Steve ever leave the bench? Cartoonist Moore’s second in the series features more of his scratchy cartoons and some goofy, sometimes-gross laughs. The story arc is predictable, but it’s peppered with “Quick Time Outs” explaining school and sports subjects with hyperbolically wry humor. Inept sports fans will identify with Steve and his buddies and wish for their own N64 controllers. As in the previous book, diversity is communicated with naming conventions, including a tired joke about a Hawaiian student’s long name.
This won’t “fry everyone’s burgers,” but its audience exists. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-220332-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to...
A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee.
Bond begins briskly—within the first 10 pages, barn cat Burdock has overheard Dewey Baxter’s nefarious plan, and by Page 17, all of the farm animals have been introduced and Burdock is sharing the terrifying news. Grady, Dewey’s (ever-so-slightly) more principled brother, refuses to go along, but instead of standing his ground, he simply disappears. This leaves the animals to fend for themselves. They do so by relying on their individual strengths and one another. Their talents and personalities match their species, bringing an element of realism to balance the fantasy elements. However, nothing can truly compensate for the bland horror of the premise. Not the growing sense of family among the animals, the serendipitous intervention of an unknown inhabitant of the barn, nor the convenient discovery of an alternate home. Meanwhile, Bond’s black-and-white drawings, justly compared to those of Garth Williams, amplify the sense of dissonance. Charming vignettes and single- and double-page illustrations create a pastoral world into which the threat of large-scale violence comes as a shock.
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to ponder the awkward coincidences that propel the plot. (Animal fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-33217-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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