Masterminds. By Gordon
Korman. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Platypus Police Squad 3: Last
Panda Standing. By Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Walden Pond Press. $12.99.
In searching for ways to
engage more readers ages 8-12, experienced authors such as Gordon Korman and
Jarrett J. Krosoczka are increasingly looking to expand the boundaries of
traditional stories for this age group – but not by too much. This leads to
their coming up with adventures that contain many of the same story elements as
in other novels for preteens – a group of protagonists rather than a single
one, an encounter with noir-ish
forces, a strong subtext on the importance of “finding yourself, who you really
are and where you fit in” – but that use the elements in new ways. You can
almost see Korman’s creative wheels turning. Kids have to escape captivity? Been
done. But what about if it’s pleasant
captivity? How about a town that’s a little too perfect to be believed, like
something out of The Stepford Wives,
which no one in this age range will know about? And how about the kids
themselves? Why are they kept captive there? Can’t be bad parents or bad guys
holding them – wait! What if the kids are
the bad guys? But not really bad
guys. Maybe the parents – if they are
the kids’ parents – think they’re
bad. But why would they think that? Some mastermind must have convinced the
parents – wait! Mastermind! What if the
kids themselves are thought to be criminal masterminds? But they’re just
kids. Maybe they’re trained to be bad? No, that’s been done…maybe they’re the
children of bad guys? No, wait – maybe they’re the clones of bad guys! That
would do it! And so we have Masterminds,
the first book of a series built on exactly that premise: that a supposedly
perfect town of 185 contains within it a number of kids who have been cloned
from some really, really bad people, as part of a nature-vs.-nurture experiment
run by a mastermind named Hammerstrom (whose name gives away that he’s
controlling and probably evil). Masterminds
is entirely typical in having a central character (Eli Frieden) who is first
among equals in the typical group of friends and compatriots that is at the
heart of this adventure. Eli in turn has a friend named Randy, and Randy is a
prime mover of the plot because he pushes limits – specifically by heading for
the edge of town (something that has never occurred to Eli, who is something of
a dim bulb at the start of the book, as the central character usually is). When
Eli and Randy get too close to the town’s border, Eli gets violently ill and
has to be rescued by the Surety, the local enforcement-of-order corps called
the Purple People Eaters by all the kids – and Randy soon finds himself expelled
from “America’s Ideal Community” under a transparent pretext. He manages to get
word back to Eli, and soon little details that don’t quite add up start to
trouble Eli and a number of the other kids. Bit by bit, the kids start to
figure out that something is deeply wrong in Serenity and that their parents
are not to be trusted – another common theme in books for this age group,
although one handled a bit differently here, as when one “mom” upbraids a “dad”
for not moving fast enough to save a child from a rattlesnake, because the boy
is “valuable.” The kids eventually learn just why and in just what way they are
“valuable,” and the revelation is not a pleasant one – leading several of them
to stage a daring escape (what other kind is there?), after which they
eventually show up at the place to which Randy has been sent. And that ends the
first book and sets up the next. Korman, as always, plots things with a sure
hand and paces them well for his intended audience. Also as always, his
plotting is so over-the-top and unbelievable that it takes more than the usual
willing suspension of disbelief to accept what is going on, never mind the
motivations of the one-dimensional characters. Still, Masterminds works as an easy-to-read, exciting series opener that
is just different enough to attract readers and just similar enough to other
preteen adventures to keep them comfortable as the story unfolds.
Krosoczka’s Platypus Police Squad series takes a
different approach. The stories are right out of a noir-ish police procedural, suitably toned down for younger readers
and told in a straightforward cops-solving-crimes tone. But the characters are
all animals, and the central ones are indeed platypuses, albeit ones that walk
upright, dress in detectives’ suits, carry weapons (boomerangs, not guns), do
not appear to lay eggs (that we know of), and do not have the poison-injecting
spines on their feet that real male platypuses have. For Krosoczka, absurdity
is stock-in-trade; witness his Lunch Lady
graphic novels, about a lunchroom chef who fights school-related crime using
modified kitchen utensils as weapons. So Platypus
Police Squad is not much farther-out than Krosoczka’s other work – but it
is farther out than other authors’
work, and that is one thing what should attract young readers to it. Another
thing is Krosoczka’s illustrations: watching platypus detectives barking
commands into cop-car microphones, a giraffe pushing a wounded panda out of a
building, a moose applying TV makeup, a scraggly chameleon doing his job as a
news reporter, and a lab-coated squirrel discussing nut processing, is enough
to appeal to any preteen with a penchant for the offbeat and silly. To counter
the visual absurdity, what Krosoczka does is to keep the narrative absolutely
straight and familiar almost all the time: “I want the perp in custody
YESTERDAY!” “Well, that’s a theory. Where are you getting that from?” “I’m
really trying hard to keep an open mind.” “He was one of the best. …Heart of
gold, spine of steel, that one had.” “Platypus Police Squad! FREEZE!” The story
here involves a mayoral campaign in which one candidate, Frank Pandini Jr., is
rich, but comes from a suspect background – his father served as mayor, was
thoroughly corrupt, and was eventually jailed as a crook. The other candidate, a
bulldog named Patrick McGovern, appears honest, but may be behind a series of
attacks on Pandini by flying squirrels – or rather squirrels that seem to fly
but may actually be regular squirrels decked out with phony wing flaps. Prior books
in this series introduced Detectives Corey O’Malley and Rick Zengo; this time
the partners are separated – Zengo being assigned to stay with Pandini’s
campaign while O’Malley gets a new, female partner, Jo Cooper. Zengo and
O’Malley both have a bad history with Pandini’s father (this is one of many noir elements Krosoczka employs), but
both must now focus on protecting Pandini Jr. O’Malley and Cooper are both
careful and methodical, but both find they need some of Zengo’s intuition and
disorganization to come up with leads in the case. Remember, these are platypuses, and reading about (and
seeing) them go through typical detective plot points is a big part of the fun
here. Eventually, in the best noir
tradition, the detectives solve the mystery, the bad guys appear beaten, but a
final twist ending shows that what everyone (including readers) thought was the
right solution has really left the fox in charge of the henhouse. Or something
like that – there’s no actual fox or hen here, but there are plenty of other
animals playing human roles. Last Panda
Standing is best read after reading the first two books, although doing so
is not strictly necessary. This book is also most appropriate for preteens who
already know the tropes of detective stories, since its humor depends heavily
on ways in which it mirrors or overturns those standard elements. For the right
audience, it is a lot of fun; but it will miss the mark for those who cannot
quite figure out what is so funny about what seems to be a fairly standardized
crime tale featuring anthropomorphic animal characters.
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