Gigi D.G.

The kingdom of Dreamside is in trouble, with Cordelia turning the king into stone and installing herself as queen. Even worse, she plans to resurrect the country's most heinous enemy, The Nightmare Knight. In order to defeat The Nightmare Knight, Cucumber's imprisoned father tells him to go a heroic quest to find a legendary sword that will defeat the knight. But Cucumber would much rather just be studying magic at school as planned....

This book is a short and quirky adventure story; I can show more definitely see it appealing to elementary-aged children, even if it wasn't particularly my cup of tea. (Sometimes the vibe reminded me of Over the Garden Wall, although I preferred that series to this one.) It is humorous at times, in addition to being packed with action and intrigue. The illustrations are lively and expressive, although I find it a bit odd personally the characters are basically anthropomorphized rabbits. The author clearly put a lot of work into building this fantasy world though, as is evident by the pages of backmatter providing maps, character cards, history, fun facts, etc. The book does end on cliffhanger so reading the next volume is clearly necessary to completing the story (or getting further along in it at any rate).

My one real quibble with the book is the way gender is presented. It's nice to see how Cucumber is more of a thinker while his younger sister Almond is the one training to be a knight. However, titling the book "Cucumber Quest" still centers the male character as protagonist, even if the siblings almost always share the action on every page. There's also references to grown women as "girls" and a character, who albeit is a villainous characters, constantly referring to himself as the "manliest." It just seemed like a bit more than was necessary. show less

A disposable paint-by-numbers media tie-in: quest, conflict, hurt feelings, friendship.

Good thing: Scorpia and Entrapta, my favorite characters, have some nice moments that rang true to the show.

Bad thing: Frosta is in the book from the start but her character name is not actually mentioned until page 100. Not good for people who aren't fully familiar with the show.

I haven't really connected with any of the characters yet, but the artwork and the story are fun, so I'll definitely try more in this series.

This is way too brightly colored and sugar-hyper for my taste and the forced, clumsy, too-obvious attempts at upending gender stereotypes were annoying and distracting. However, I am not the target audience and I can see seven-to-ten-year-olds gobbling it up and declaring it awesome.