Stone-cold predictable but with enough silliness to keep sliding along.
Art-loving cave lad Lug again saves his clan (and several others too) from the twin menaces of climate change and bad guys.
As if the arrival of snow and saber-toothed tigers in series opener Dawn of the Ice Age (2014) weren’t upsetting enough, here comes a mountain of ice moving with suspicious speed and precision toward the homes of the Macrauchenia Rider and Boar Rider clans. Riding out atop friendly mammoth Woolly to investigate, Lug and pals find both a glacier riddled with tunnels and Blast, a weirdly white-skinned frozen boy who, when thawed out, offers the glacier as a mobile shelter for the threatened locals. But the sight of exiled thug Bonehead working with Blast hints that all is not as it seems—and indeed, the whole setup turns out to be an ongoing scheme to rob prehistoric communities of their livestock. Can Lug stop Blast and his cronies (and the glacier), free the captive villagers imprisoned at the mountain’s bottom, and maybe even rescue the cub that Blast has kidnapped to keep the resident polar bears in line? Natch! By the end all’s made right, he’s found a new friend in equally artistic Boaga (described as “dark-skinned” with “frizzy black hair and almond-shaped eyes”), and even lost at least some of his pathological fear of animals. Gerardi dresses modern-looking kids in crude furs for the cartoon illustrations.
Stone-cold predictable but with enough silliness to keep sliding along. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5124-0641-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
