Potterwookiee

August 20, 2012
As the title suggests, this second entry in Skye's humorous Creature in My Closet series features a mashup of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Chewbacca the Wookiee from Star Wars. When a small, furry creature with a lightning bolt scar and a striped scarf emerges from 12-year-old Rob's bedroom closet, he knows exactly what to do, thanks to the experience he gained in Wonkenstein (2011), which saw the arrival of a Willy Wonka/Frankenstein hybrid. Rob heads to the library, and by reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and a Star Wars title, as well as enlisting the help of his not-always-helpful friends, Rob tries to stand up to a bully, win a cooking contest, and earn the respect of his crush. Speaking of hybrids, Skye captures all the silly action in the winning text-plus-cartoons format popularized by the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Rob's dry commentary on his family, school, and social life is sure to provoke laughs. Next up: a third outing starring "Pinocula," teased at book's end. Ages 9â12.

July 15, 2012
The second doll-sized literary mashup to come out of a wimpy kid's magic closet (see Wonkenstein, 2011) adds wizardly spells and, far more frequently, noxious smells to a standard catalog of preteen misadventures. Having reintroduced his family ("I mean my mom calls me Ribert, and if she's not humiliating me, she's sleeping"), Robert explains the origins of the pocket companion he dubs "Hairy." He chattily goes on to record efforts to save his little buddy from rough friends, his little brother, a garbage truck and an aggressive owl, along with his repeated transformation into a dork whenever he runs into dreamboat neighbor Janae. Amid references to monkey waste, a modified version of Old Maid called "Yo Mama" and other strained laffs, he recruits said friends to reform a bully by tying the punk to a graveyard tree one night. He also creates what turns out to be a revolting concoction for a cooking contest in hopes of appearing on Average Chef, "TV's third most watched reality cooking show." Still sailing along in Jeff Kinney's wake format-wise, Skye presents Rob's tally of haps and mishaps in a mix of block print and frequent, wobbly line drawings with punch lines and side remarks in dialogue balloons. In the end, Hairy leaves his tiny wand as a keepsake and returns to the closet, setting the stage for Rob's next visitor: Pinocula. Maybe the next episode will be less derivative. There's always hope. (Comic fantasy. 9-11)

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November 1, 2012

Gr 4-6-Robert Columbo Burnside had been using his closet as a science lab. When his mom demands that he clean up his room, he throws his books and other items into the closet. Everything mixes together with the lab chemicals and out comes Potterwookiee: part Chewbacca and part Harry Potter. Robert calls him Hairy. Laugh-out-loud episodes ensue after Hairy falls into a trance because he has been attacked by the town's plague of owls. When Robert's friend Jack tells others about Hairy, the boy's friends come over to check him out. Most of them think he's a stuffed animal since he isn't moving, and they want to put him in the "flinger," a seesaw contraption that's best known for flinging ice-cream sandwiches. Meanwhile, Robert is being picked on by Wilt, the town bully, who steals his bicycle. He messes with everyone by pretending to fix their hair but gives them "Wilt-whirls" instead: hairdos so bad that they are impossible to comb out, even causing one kid to shave his hair into a reverse Mohawk. When Hairy comes out of his trance, he helps Robert and his friends get even with Wilt in a funny scene that takes place in the graveyard. The text is hysterical by itself, but acts as the straight man in relation to the one-two punch of the childlike drawings and captions that appear on almost every page. Get multiple copies of this book: it will fly off the shelves.Diane McCabe, John Muir Elementary, Santa Monica, CA

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