When the cover is spread to its full width, two huge eyes stare from behind broad green leaves, perhaps the most striking painting in this entry from Cowcher (Tigress, 1991, etc.), who continues to address the issue of coexistence between humans and nature. Each spread becomes a wide canvas for color, shape, and form as Cowcher shows her subject—a jaguar—stalked by a hunter in the Venezuelan Llanos, a flood plain that is home to many animal, bird, and reptile species, even during the dry season. Tracks left in the dust are the key to this king of the food chain; the hunter— worried about his cattle—follows the signs, past iguana, blue morpho butterfly, and caiman, into the forest where the jaguar, an equally expert hunter, catches a howler monkey. There is mild suspense when the man finds his prey, only to experience a transformation: ``The hunter's will to kill deserts him. He sinks to his knees in wonder at such power and beauty.'' The jaguar is spared—``The land belongs to the jaguar as much as to him.'' As in Lynne Cherry's The Great Kapok Tree (1989), noble sentiments overwhelm the story. The simplicity of the text cannot bear the complexity of such a spiritual vision, which is not explained in context, but in a note that addresses the meaning of the ``raging jaguar spirit'' to the Central and South American hunters. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-590-29937-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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