Little does Runt Higgins suspect that keeping his hard-won place in the Junior Henchman Training Program will not only require battling bullies and giant gorillas, but rescuing undercover librarians and putting on a fashion show.
Runt is both mysterious of past and, due to a certain death curse, short of future. He is therefore astonished when an attacking Oti—a ravening “land piranha” disguised (to nonmagical eyes) as a Girl Explorer—doesn’t eat his face because he’s “fameely.” This clue to his origins leads him eventually to the Great Library, a fabled repository of all knowledge, though not before Grau pitches him into a barrel full of pickles that tests every ounce of what turn out to be considerable funds of courage and ingenuity. He draws on these to handle tasks that range from rescuing a panicky fire-breathing dragon to pulling from disaster a student fashion show hastily concocted by his school’s erratic headmaster to appease the arrogant moms of the powerful Siren Syndicate. As he does this, Runt continues to develop admirable chops at rising to challenges and also at resolving both personal and larger-scale conflicts. He plainly has a bright future…brief though it promises to be. Sutphin himself displays a dab hand at depicting googly-eyed monsters, hostile or otherwise, in the scattered illustrations.
Another smart, funny romp featuring a notably diverse cast headed by a minion who’s looking more and more like a hero. (map) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1371-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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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. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK TO SCREEN
With their big brother Artemis off to Mars, 11-year-old twins Myles and Beckett are swept up in a brangle with murderous humans and even more dangerous magical creatures.
Unsurprisingly, the fraternal Irish twins ultimately prove equal to the challenge—albeit with help from, Colfer as omniscient narrator admits early on, a “hugely improbable finale.” Following the coincidental arrival on their island estate of two denizens of the subterranean fairy realm in the persons of a tiny but fearsome troll and a “hybrid” pixie-elf, or “pixel,” police trainee, the youngest Fowls immediately find themselves in the sights of both Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, a ruthless aristocrat out to bag said troll for its immorality-conferring venom, and Sister Jeronima Gonzalez-Ramos de Zárate, black-ops “nunterrogation” and knife specialist for ACRONYM, an intergovernmental fairy-monitoring organization. Amid the ensuing whirl of captures, escapes, trickery, treachery, and gunfire (none of which proves fatal…or at least not permanently), the twins leverage their complementary differences to foil and exasperate both foes: Myles being an Artemis mini-me who has dressed in black suits since infancy and loves coming up with and then “Fowlsplaining” his genius-level schemes; and Beckett, ever eager to plunge into reckless action and nearly nonverbal in English but with an extraordinary gift for nonhuman tongues. In the end they emerge triumphant, though threatened with mind wipe if they ever interfere in fairy affairs again. Yeah, right. Human characters seem to be default white; “hybrid” is used to describe nonhuman characters of mixed heritage.
Like its bestselling progenitors, a nonstop spinoff afroth with high tech, spectacular magic, and silly business. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-04375-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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