Review by New York Times Review
IN TALES OF wayward children, parents are often a child's best allies in cleaning up the mess. But what happens when the parents are wayward and the child their rescuer? That's the dilemma facing the heroes of four new novels. IN KENNETH OPPELS astonishing INKLING (Knopf, 272 pp., $17.99; ages8 to 12), the death of Ethan's mother leaves his artist father a zombie-walking "Coma Dad," paralyzed by creative block. Kids at school assume Ethan has inherited his father's genius, begging him to draw on command, slipping him fan letters for his father and choosing him as the artist for a massive school project, based only on his dad's fame - though Ethan alone knows his father hasn't produced a single piece of work in two years. Enter Inkling, a splotch of ink that manifests from Ethan's father sketchbook as a living embodiment of creativity, with the power to read, write and draw. Ethan prizes Inkling like a golden goose: What if it could draw for both him and his father? All Ethan has to do is successfully parent it: feed it, nurture it, manage its volatile emotions. Yet Inkling has roared to life with a purpose, "a whole storm of feelings" congealed into a Rorschach blot, straight from Ethan's father's unconscious. Throughout the book, vibrant, shapeshifting illustrations by Sydney Smith add to this effect. Ink splashes at page corners as if Inkling were alive between the book's covers; characters seem to morph out of black puddles; and whenever the inky gremlin is left untethered too long, Smith mirrors its creative rages with startling full-page panels suggesting Inkling might swallow the story straight out of readers' hands. With each page, we feel Ethan's tension growing, his father's anxieties looming larger and larger, like Inkling's growing blot. To control Inkling, then, the son must find a way to vanquish Dad's demons. That Inkling represents the father's spirit instead of the son's is a stirring choice. Ethan conceals Inkling from his father at first-literally, protecting a piece of his father's soul from him, until Ethan crumbles under the pressure. "A secret was a heavy thing to carry around for so long," he laments, "and day by day it only got heavier." Ethan is a stand-in for every child who must take on the role of parent to sustain a family. But part of what Ethan has to learn is that his father's failings aren't his own; the more Ethan tries to parent Inkling, the more it metastasizes. When the monstrous blotch is finally devoured, we feel Ethan's relief, his father's soul no longer his ward. ETHAN'S father is known only as Dad, but in Christopher Healy's a perilous journey OF DANGER & MAYHEM: A DASTARDLY PLOT (Walden Pond Press, 384 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), Mom has a name: Cassandra Pepper, a manic, stargazing inventor in 1883 New York, who seems to be less mother to her 12-year-old daughter, Molly, and more balland-chain. Molly's father is dead, but his ghost looms large: He had "promised his beloved Cassandra she would never have to give up on her dream" of rivaling Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla. After her father's death, then, Molly quits school and becomes her mother's assistant, refusing "to let her father become a liar." Determined to showcase Cassandra's flying contraption at the World Fair, only to be thwarted by the all-male Inventors' Guild, Molly soon uncovers the dastardly plot of the title, a death machine targeting the entire city, which Molly and her mother must team up to defuse. With the help of allies, including a Chinese boy named Emmett ("We don't have the best reputation around here," he sighs, fully aware of anti-immigrant sentiment), Molly tracks down the suspected assassins. One by one, the clues point toward famous inventors - Alexander Graham Bell, Edison himself - which gives young readers a chance to meet and exonerate each one before the chase begins again. But amid Healy's whip-smart banter and well-hewed cameos (including appearances by several unsung female inventors), a thorny question takes hold. Unlike Ethan, who struggles valiantly to not be his parents, Molly is her mother's proxy. Indeed, Molly exists so purely to serve Cassandra's hopes, Cassandra's dreams, Cassandra's future, that even mother and daughter are left wondering at book's end: What does Molly want? MOLLY HAS MUCH in common with Mel in Matt Phelan's illustrated knights vs. dinoSAURS (Greenwillow, 160 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), a squire for the knight Bors, "a brute in shining armor" who initially has no clue his liege is a girl. At King Arthur's Round Table, where the pair are in service, knights act as their squires' exclusive guardians, which means Mel's parents are out of the picture and Bors is, essentially, her dad. Testing knight and squire - along with the rest of Arthur's knights - is a forest full of Jurassic beasts. Whether jousting with a triceratops or facing down a Trex, Mel should come with a halo: She's thoughtful, sensitive and wise, "always thinking, planning, preparing." Parenting her seems to require little more than staying out of her way. Not that Bors seems equipped for the role, insisting a female squire is an affront to his dignity and the natural order, where "Might Makes Right." Phelan's illustrations heighten the contrast. Mel is drawn deftly, lightly; Bors is a barrel-chested Cro-Magnon with a bald skull and angry glower. The assumed end to the story would be Mel taming her master and Bors softening in turn - the child become parent. But Phelan stays true to Bors's stubbornness: Even after she saves his life, earning his trust and respect, he abandons her at quest's end: "I cannot have a girl as a squire. It just... it just isn't done." The moment is jarring and cleareyed, reminding us that not every parent can change. Sometimes, family must be found elsewhere. GIVEN THE DEARTH of good stewards, it's natural to envy the two best friends in sanity & TALLULAH (Disney-Hyperion, 240 pp., $21.99; ages 8 to 12), who are blessed with full sets of parents. Molly Brooks's high-octane graphic novel charts the girls' attempt to bioengineer a three-headed cat on their space station home. When "Princess Sparkle" escapes, Tallulah and Sanity go hunting for their new pet, only to suss out a bigger vermin problem that could torpedo their space station. Mirroring Healy's plot, where the initial quest is a red herring for a larger crisis, Brooks diverges in making Tallulah's mother and Sanity's father patient yet strict, sensible yet encouraging, all the while flawlessly managing a space station meltdown. In one of Brooks's sharp, well-paced panels, which juggle action set pieces with helter-skelter angles and onomatopoeic effects, Tallulah's Latina mother redoes her own hair band after teleporting herself, while in another, Sanity's African-American father interrupts his station-saving to make sure his daughter eats dinner. Sanity and Tallulah have no resentment against their parents, no building rebellion; their goal is to find Franken-kitty and keep her alive, despite their parents' threats to destroy the lab cat once she's captured. Given how tempered and loving the guardians are, the cat's fate never seems in doubt. But if such enviable parenting drains a deeper threat from the novel, keeping the girls' mischief well-bounded, Brooks restores the balance by amping up the clear and present danger, forcing both families to work as a unit, suggesting that when it comes to the future, parent and child relying on each other just might be a new frontier. SOMAN CHAINANI is the author of the School for Good and Evil series. His next book, "A Crystal of Time," will be published in the spring.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* If there's such a thing as catnip for kids, Phelan's produced it with this illustrated novel, which pits a few of King Arthur's knights against a grab bag of dinosaurs. The results are openly anachronistic and absurdly entertaining. Having largely eradicated the threats to Arthur's kingdom trolls, dragons, giants, and so on the Knights of the Round Table spend a good deal of their time boasting of their own bravery. One evening, Merlin baits the braggarts with a rumor of a Terrible Lizard, and Sirs Erec, Bors, Hector, and a mysterious black-armored knight agree to vanquish the creature. When they find the monster's cave, it's disappointingly empty, save for a book titled Terrible Lizards. Yet, a tropical landscape now awaits them outside the cave, as does a Spinosaurus-like dinosaur. The clash is comically disastrous, ending with much crushed armor but all lives intact. The brave (albeit dented) knights then decide to split up to find the purported tyrant king (Tyrannosaurus rex), but end up discovering their only chance of success lies in working together. Though final art was unseen, the book will feature sophisticated ink drawings that range from spot art and dynamic page illustrations to graphic-novel-style battle scenes. Gender stereotypes and egos are challenged along with dinosaurs, giving readers a spectacular book that's victorious on all fronts.--Julia Smith Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a highly illustrated chapter book, four braggart knights and one underappreciated squire square off against dinosaurs, all while learning about teamwork and honesty. Confronted with a dearth of foes in peacetime, Camelot's lesser knights feel inclined to exaggerate the "battles with beasties, run-ins with rogue trolls, or fisticuffs with fierce giants" that they purport to engage in regularly. Sent back in time by Merlin for such embellishments, Sir Erec, Sir Hector, the mysterious Black Knight, and Sir Bors (and squire Mel) know as little about "terrible lizards" as they know about true feats of strength. Nevertheless, the team finds itself doing spectacular battle with numerous recognizable prehistoric beasts, complete with one-on-one bouts, team attacks, and rescue missions (tricera-joust, anyone?). Motion-filled art by Phelan (Snow White) depicts anachronisms side by side in standalone and sequential panels. And as the time-traveling knights try to fight their way back to their true place in time, plot twists reveal the heroes' true identifiers, adding depth to this hilarious slapstick romp. Ages 8-12. (Oct.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-The Knights of the Round Table share a secret: they spend most of their time fighting with each other for the fun of it because the kingdom has too few dragons to battle. To impress King Arthur, Sir Eric and the other knights embellish their tales. Merlin knows that the elaborate tales are too incredible, so he dangles a dangerous adventure in front of the knights. Of course, they take the bait. At the break of dawn, Sir Eric embarks on an escapade to face the most fearsome creature of all: the "Terrible Lizard." Not to be outdone, Sir Hector, Bors, and the Black Knight join the odyssey. This rollicking story is suspenseful and silly. The black-and-white pencil drawings add to the excitement and include double-page, comic book-like spreads that even reluctant readers will enjoy. -VERDICT Themes of teamwork and feminism emerge, making this an excellent choice for all readers.-Annette Herbert, F.E. Smith Elementary School, Cortland, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
After Sir Erec lies about slaying forty dragons to King Arthur, Merlin, and his fellow Knights of the Round Table, he finds himself, along with three other knights and a helpful young squire, sent millions of years into the past to face off against a seemingly endless deluge of angry dinosaurs. Readers witness each knights failure in solo combat against a variety of powerful dinosaurs. It is not until Sirs Erec, Hector, Bors, and the mysterious Black Knight learn to work together as a team that they finally overcome these mysterious thunder lizards and return to Camelot as gallant heroes. Playing fast and loose with anachronisms, Arthurian legend, and the Mesozoic period, Phelan crafts a lighthearted romp of an adventure sure to please readers looking for a chapter book full of both action and humor. The time-travel magic is left unexplained, allowing readers to focus on the engaging cast of characters and their various foibles. Pen-and-ink spot art and full-page illustrations, as well as intermittent comic-style sequential art, bring the swordplay action to the forefront and keep the tone light enough for the books young audience. Appended with A Note from Merlin dinosaur-fact back matter (unseen). eric carpenter (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Who needs dragons when there are Terrible Lizards to be fought?Having recklessly boasted to King Arthur and the court that he'd slain 40 dragons, Sir Erec can hardly refuse when Merlin offers him more challenging foesand so it is that in no time (so to speak), Erec, with bookish Sir Hector, the silent and enigmatic Black Knight, and blustering Sir Bors with his thin but doughty squire, Mel, in tow, are hewing away at fearsome creatures sporting natural armor and weapons every bit as effective as knightly ones. Happily, while all the glorious mashing and bashing leads to awesome feats aplentywho would suspect that a ravening T. Rex could be decked by a well-placed punch to the jaw?when the dust settles neither bloodshed nor permanent injury has been dealt to either side. Better yet, not even the stunning revelation that two of the Three Stooges-style bumblers aren't what they seem ("Anyone else here a girl?") keeps the questers from developing into a well-knit team capable of repeatedly saving one another's bacon. Phelan endows the all-white human cast with finely drawn, eloquently expressive faces but otherwise works in a loose, movement-filled style, pitting his clanking crew against an almost nonstop onslaught of toothy monsters in a monochrome mix of single scenes and occasional wordless sequential panels.Epicin plot, not lengthand as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris' Arthurian exploits. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 9-11) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
