Book Review: Gorilla Tactics

Title:  Gorilla Tactics (Dr. Critchlore's School for Minions #2)

By: Sheila Grau (Joe Sutphin, illustrator)

Published by: Amulet Books

Release date: March 1, 2016

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

304 pages

Buy it at Amazon, IndieBound, Book Depository, or Barnes & Noble

Runt Higgins is back!  A couple of months have passed since the events of the first book in the series, and Runt is determined to figure out who cursed him to die on his 16^th birthday.  In order to do that, he needs to find the Great Library.  Unfortunately, most people believe the Great Library is just a legend.  At the same time, the director of a rival minion school is trying to take over Critchlore’s School for Minions.  Luckily for Runt, Dr. Critchlore has a brilliant plan to save the school with…a fashion show.

I confess that I thought the idea of a fashion show was pretty lame and that Gorilla Tactics, as well as the fashion show, would go down in flames.  I needn’t have worried.  In Grau’s capable hands, the fashion show had a great twist that ended up relating to both the hostile takeover and the Great Library plot threads and tying them together.  Lots of fun.

After the original book, Dr. Critchlore’s School for Minions, I wanted to know more about the world in which the school is situated, and Gorilla Tactics delivers.  Readers learn more about the different Evil Overlords and the territories they control.  We also get a glimpse of the overall governing body the UNO (United Nations of Overlords) and its legislative arm, the EOC (Evil Overlord Council).

I still think Runt and most of the other kids at Critchlore’s are too nice to be consigned to a future as minions to various Evil Overlords.  My kids and I eagerly await the third book to find out what happens next!

Summary:

The second book in this hilarious, illustrated series cracks the imaginative world of minions wide open, and we meet the other schools and Evil Overlords that surround Dr. Critchlore’s.
 
Runt Higgins needs answers, fast. Someone cursed him to die on his sixteenth birthday, but no one seems to know who cursed him or why. Runt decides he must find the Great Library, where all true knowledge is hidden. Unfortunately, the only people who know the location of the Great Library are a covert network of librarian-spies who’d rather die than give up the Library’s secrets. And when one of Runt’s professors is attacked, it soon becomes clear that others are also out to find the Library at any cost. Meanwhile, Runt’s not the only one whose days are numbered. To save the floundering school from an inevitable sale, Dr. Critchlore takes some desperate measures. His master plan to save the school: a fashion show.