Fix that, and the developers will have an app worthy of repeat visits.
Younger video gamers will feel right at home in this abridged rendition’s elaborately animated environment.
On seven multilayered tableaux designed to open and unfold as spreads of a digital pop-up book, Gulliver and the Lulliputians meet and bond (without the original classic’s urinating-on-the-fire scene, alas). After Gulliver drives off the invading “Blefuscuan” fleet [sic: Swift referred to them as “Blefuscudians”], they bid one another adieu. Rounded and moving like a jointed puppet to create a 3D effect, Gulliver towers over little figures and buildings rendered as 2D paper cutouts or pop-up assemblages. The audio can’t be switched off, but readers can choose an English or Spanish track, to see the text or not and also to have the tale presented in either manual mode or an only somewhat less interactive autoplay. Whatever the chosen options, each scene offers a mix of dramatic manual and automatic panning, zooming, swiveling and dissolves, along with question marks and swirls of stars that cue with a tap such “interesting events” as thrown ropes, sudden zooms, exclamations and even, on one spread, a guessing game. This rich array of inventive visual and sonic effects compensate for a narrative reduced to lines like “Lilliput citizens got surprised when they saw huge Gulliver” and spoken and print texts that don’t always match exactly. A far more serious flaw is the unfortunate resemblance the hunched-over, slant-eyed, bucktoothed Lilliputian soldiers bear to the worst kind of anti-Asian propaganda.
Fix that, and the developers will have an app worthy of repeat visits. (iPad storybook/game app. 6-9)Pub Date: July 15, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Digital Aria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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