Well-deserved woe unto adults who do Dillweed wrong! His parents are off voyaging, and he’s poetically jealous: “Dillweed liked to go places. He liked to have adventures. He liked to have a good time. His parents went places. His parents had adventures. His parents had a good time. The parents. Not Dillweed.” Using ink and gouache, Ellis paints the minimalist gothic mansion in low-intensity rust, brown and gray; adorable pet reptile Skorped is a refreshing pale blue. Garishly distorted bodies and faces reveal the odiousness in nasty servants Umblud and Perfidia and their guests. Heide and her family’s text is elegantly understated: “Dillweed did something”—the illustrations show that Dillweed conjures gray ghouls; “Umblud made a foolish mistake”—Umblud drinks lethal poison that Perfidia meant for Skorped; “Perfidia made a foolish mistake”—Perfidia gets crushed under a wardrobe by a gray ghoul. Even subtler is Dillweed’s revenge against Skorped’s next attackers. Dillweed and Skorped “wished the parents would go away," and lickety-split, a black wreath adorns the manor’s door while boy and pet depart for their long-denied adventures. Good, macabre fun. (Picture book. 9 & up)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-206394-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love.
Lunar Jones joins other planetary guardians to unravel clues from Proteus and save the solar system in this third series entry.
Lunar, a 15-year-old dragoon, is known far and wide and regarded as a hero on Mars, but his personal life contains tension. He’s bonded for life with Dread, the savvy war strategist King-Dragon of Mars, but the Dread Knights are leaving one by one to pursue other opportunities. Though he’s unhappy about this, Lunar doesn’t try to hold them back. Sorting out his feelings for Rose Proctor is another can of worms. Plus he’s preparing for the upcoming Solar Summit, which is held by the planetary dragons once every 500 years. Reminiscent of a dragon family reunion, the summit includes equal measures of information exchange, camaraderie, and squabbles, but the appearance of a shape-shifting Fear Dragon brings everyone to laser-focused attention as they rally against a monstrous unseen enemy. Lunar’s first-person narration presents him variously as an awkward teen, pep-talking mentor, and battle-savvy commander. The dragon battles rock, innovations abound, and the Proteus messages tantalizingly reveal themselves right up until the cliffhanger ending. Names and skin tones cue some ethnic and racial diversity among the smart, strong teenage crew members surrounding the white-presenting Lunar. Knowledge of the previous books is essential to fully appreciate this volume, which explores characters and situations from earlier entries; a prologue introduces the formidable new characters Doom and Gloom.
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781665982016
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
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. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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