An absolute delight, featuring a quirky, resourceful doll heroine.
In Hébert’s illustrated debut children’s book, a cloth doll with a special gold monocle, watch, and bustle gets lost and goes on adventures.
Elsie’s mother made a doll named Maesee Peek from scraps of tapestry and lace, giving her a Victorian bustle and big purple hair. (She got her name because Elsie kept asking, “May I see? Just a peek” during the doll’s construction.) Elsie’s father added some important touches, including a gold monocle so that Maesee “will always see where to go,” and a gold watch on a chain so she’ll “always know when it is time to come home.” Elsie adores Maesee and is never without her—until the day she accidentally leaves the doll behind after an outdoor picnic. Maesee tumbles onto the muddy bank of a pond lined with cattails, and after several twists and turns, she gets loaded onto a ship filled with art and precious objects and sent across the sea. A storm arises and the ship’s contents go overboard, but luckily, Elsie’s clever mother crafted Maesee’s bustle from Elsie’s worn-out flotation device, and the doll floats long enough to be picked up by a sea gull and then found by two little girls vacationing in an Irish castle. Hébert offers an appealing heroine and dramatic plot twists and vividly renders such moments as when the container ship full of artwork gets subsumed into the ocean. Especially pleasing is the narrator, who respects children’s intelligence; for example, when seawater drifts into her monocle, Maesee thinks they’re “Sneaky little creatures coming here to hide before the menu recommends a delicious assortment of zooplankton.” Historical information enriches the story, as when the leprechaun-ish concierge comments on Irish lace: “The patterns were carefully guarded secrets passed along only to the daughters of the original women artists who created them. We are extremely proud of the collection.” Lemaire’s illustrations ably capture the book’s magical, one-of-a-kind spirit.
An absolute delight, featuring a quirky, resourceful doll heroine.Pub Date: March 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6765-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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