A sweetly, quietly appealing piece of whimsy.
This original fairy tale looks as timeworn as a fairy tale should, with a story just runic enough to keep the wheels turning in little minds.
“It was a greyish-blue day. Rainy and windy, it tasted like a dandelion blowball, felt like a wax cloth, smelt like a bonfire and was as long and slimy, as an earthworm.” Just the kind of day you might expect to find a hole in the pocket of your coat. A Man in a village finds himself in such a predicament. And worse: “[The] hole in his jacket turned out to be the size of his childhood. The Man has lost it a long, very long time ago.” Now, repairing the hole might cut the Man off completely from his childhood, so the fairy Zhuzha tells him to hold on, she’ll go look. She runs into a princess, who is literally fishing for compliments, and some squawking birds. Zhuzha has a brainstorm, even if it does mean she will be spending much time in the dark: She is “of the same size as the hole in [the] pocket.” The brief story (just six pages) is laid out on sepia-toned backgrounds with fine-lined, gently animated cartoon drawings to accompany the text. The village looks like a 19th-century shtetl preserved in amber, though it has (really charming) moving parts.
A sweetly, quietly appealing piece of whimsy. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)Pub Date: July 4, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Timecode
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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