The Evil Penguin Plan
The Flying Beaver Brothers by Maxwell Eaton III
Review: Action! Danger! Occasional napping!
Maxwell Eaton III opens his new series of "comic" (pun-intended) graphic novel adventures featuring The Flying Beaver Brothers Ace and Bub with The Evil Penguin Plan.
Ace — he's the one who likes action and adventure — is preparing for the annual Beaver Island Surfing Competition when a couple of penguins steal his surfboard. He wakes his brother Bub — he's the one who likes napping — and they take off after them. Ace follows the thieves to their underwater hideout, where he sees blueprints for a dastardly device to cover Beaver Island with ice, creating Penguin Paradise: Resort and Polar Style Living — "Like home never melted." Ace is determined to thwart the penguins' plans, but where is Bub? Meanwhile, a surfing competitor has his own plans to take the top prize by eliminating the competition.
"The Flying Beaver Brothers" is intended to be a series of eco-conscious graphic novels, but the message is really quite subtle here, and will almost certainly not be apparent to the intended audience of 6- to 9-year-old readers. Rather, these readers will no doubt focus on the action-oriented antics of Ace and Bub, more of the former than the latter, and the fast-paced, well thought out storyline that links the two subplots in a clever manner. Adults who choose to read along with the kids will chuckle at the frequently amusing wordplay. The Evil Penguin Plan is an entertaining start to this series.
Acknowledgment: Random House provided a copy of The Evil Penguin Plan for this review.
Review Copyright © 2012 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Selected reviews of other mysteries by this author …
The Fishy Business
Alfred A. Knopf (Trade Paperback), January 2012
ISBN-13: 9780375864483; ISBN-10: 0375864482
Location(s) referenced in The Evil Penguin Plan:
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The Evil Penguin Plan by Maxwell Eaton III
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-10: 0-375-86447-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-375-86447-6
Publication Date: January 2012
List Price: $6.99
Synopsis (from the publisher): Meet Ace and Bub, the flying beaver brothers! Ace loves extreme sports and is always looking for a new adventure. Bub loves napping and, well, napping. But when penguins threaten to freeze Beaver Island for "resort and polar-style living," the brothers put their talents to work saving their tropical island paradise. Can they save Beaver Island from environmental destruction? And can they do it in time to still win the annual Beaver Island Surfing Competition?