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. Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. 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…

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. Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. 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.”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). 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”). Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. 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. Blackwood? Enjoyably rollicking adventures are appropriately cheesy the stereotypes, though equally fitting, are a bit much.

And what is the deep, dark secret that has given Grace nightmares all her life-and what does it have to do with Dr. Luckily there are friendly Pygmies to help. There the children must reunite with their uncle, find the mythic dinosaur Mokèlè-mbembè, and avoid the minions of evil Dr.

Though he doesn’t intend to bring the children on his dinosaur hunt in the Congo, they arrive anyway, after falling from his airplane into the darkest jungle, accompanied only by a teacup poodle, a chimpanzee named Bo, and a high-end Gizmo complete with videoconferencing. Wolfe hunts cryptids: mythical creatures such as Yetis, Kraken, and Chupacabras. When the twins’ explorer parents vanish in the Amazon (to be found in the next book?), mischief-maker Marty and genius scaredy-cat Grace go to live on Uncle Wolfe’s private island. When Uncle Wolfe takes them on a dinosaur hunt, orphaned twins Grace and Marty find themselves in a B-movie with email.

Cryptid hunters by roland smith