The Unflushables

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY APR 23, 2018

After a nefarious corporation wrests control of Nitro City's sewers, plumbers are banned, and mutant beasts begin emerging from drains. Since the toilets are constantly clogged at Gloomy Valley Middle School, 13-year-old Sully Stringfellow, who works after school as an "outlaw" plumber's helper, is recruited to apprehend the "Phantom Clogger" before Taco Tuesday, when, the principal says, "I need every stall open for business." The premise of Bates's (How to Make Friends and Monsters) satirical romp gives him free rein with potty puns, yet the humor extends further, fueled by Sully's wry asides, droll badinage, and a colorful cast that includes a retired super-villain who lives in a secret underground lair; Sully's crusty grandfather, member of a posse of crackerjack plumbers that guarded the sewers; and the boy's parents, off in Fiji, where his mother sells repurposed spatulas, and his poet father searches for a word that rhymes with purple. An explosive literally finale wraps up this lighthearted, swift-paced saga of good vs. evil in a slimy underworld. Ages 8 12.)