This imaginative, well-crafted story is hopefully the first of many from its precocious young author
A king learns that bigger isn’t always better in 13-year-old writer and illustrator Kahn’s debut children’s book
After accepting a piece of fruit from a mysterious stranger, a king awakens to find himself shrunken to a height of three inches. To save his kingdom, he will have to fight the evil sorcerer Sinerious, whose enchanted trees have knocked down the palace walls and spread over the land. To make matters worse, a bird swoops down and snatches up the miniscule king, carrying him off in its beak. It’s up to the royal family and loyal advisers to save his highness. Khan doesn’t oversimplify his hero’s plight. Out in the world, the king finds that his diminished size isn’t as limiting as he initially thought. Being tiny, he can hide from certain predators, such as the crocodile that unwittingly delivers him safely to shore on its snout after the bird drops his majesty in the river. Kahn’s illustrations are few, but his style is bright and expressive, if simply rendered; a flock of birds fills the moonlit sky as the king’s courtier takes a lonely walk up a hill to escape a giant and find the rest of his party. When the evil sorcerer reveals his true purpose for leveling the kingdom, the work takes on surprisingly political undertones, even more so when the evil sorcerer meets a grizzly end. Through it all, Khan weaves a compelling tale, with a vocabulary worthy of an SAT exam. Elementary school teachers might keep a copy of this book handy as an example of how to construct a fictional narrative, though Khan’s younger readers, whom he addresses in his forward, might have to wait a few grades to be able to get through all of his densely written text.
This imaginative, well-crafted story is hopefully the first of many from its precocious young authorPub Date: April 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4415-9070-1
Page Count: 31
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2010
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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