This title can be read alone and will win new fans, while long-standing fans will cheer. Just Grace continues to be just...
Mix the ingredients of a school fair, Grandma’s cupcake recipe and a broken promise to a friend, and you have the 10th entry in the Just Grace series.
Just Grace is still in third grade, her best friend, Mimi, lives next door, and she loves to romp with her dog, Mr. Scruffers, who’s really a female. The plot centers on a visit from Grace’s grandmother, her excellent cupcake recipe (included in the backmatter) and the annual school fair. When Grace accidentally suggests cupcakes for the fair theme, she breaks a pinky-swear promise with Mimi: to support Mimi’s idea that candy should be the theme for the school fair. Two devices add to the charm of Grace’s ingenuous narrative. Frequent captions in place of chapter headings facilitate flow; such brief phrases as “The Thing That Made Me Extra Happy” and “What Is Really Hard to Do” break the text into bite-sized chunks and lead readers smoothly through transitions. And Grace’s love for creating new words by putting two together—mad + frustrated = mustrated, yummy + delicious = yummilicious—is downright endearing. Black-and-white spot art with balloon dialogue is just right for Grace’s spunky personality.
This title can be read alone and will win new fans, while long-standing fans will cheer. Just Grace continues to be just delightful. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-87744-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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