Rattles along to thrill-a-minute tracks, but the series shows signs of losing steam.
How better to celebrate a 13th birthday than by following clues to a priceless treasure hidden for more than 2,000 years while being hotly pursued by armed thugs and Black Ops units?
Still by far the smartest person in every room she enters, Charlie continues her quest to track down the world’s greatest treasures while keeping herself and the fantastically dangerous formula only she knows out of the hands of an increasing number of intelligence agencies and other bad actors. A bit of ancient steganography sends her, with her half brother, Dante, and his partner, Milana, both CIA agents, from Giza to the Acropolis, the Roman Forum and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art—for, at each stop, a new clue or artifact paired to heavy infodumps about the locale’s historical and archaeological highlights. Not to mention one or more ambushes with, occasionally, gunfire, one or more high-speed chases (including one in a chariot, which is at least different), and chances for Charlie’s overachieving sidekicks each to take out entire squads of gunmen sent by the Israeli Mossad, the Egyptian Mukhabarat, an Egyptian billionaire, and even the CIA. The prize turns out to be worth the kerfuffle, but even though this is only the third episode, the plot is all manufactured action strung together with mechanical predictability. The characterizations are equally facile. Multiracial Charlie is described as having globally diverse racial origins.
Rattles along to thrill-a-minute tracks, but the series shows signs of losing steam. (Action adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9934-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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