Visually distinctive and emotionally atmospheric, but the perfunctory storyline limits its audience appeal.
Sophisticated animation and understated music complement a poignant if truncated tale first published in 1964.
A little girl is consigned to an orphanage after her parents “went away when she was nine.” The “quite unattractive” child spits at other children and so misbehaves that the director wants to send her away. This established, the story ends abruptly with a message that she leaves in a tree: “Whoever finds this, I love you.” Even the print edition was more about Vanni’s design and illustrations than Siff's story. They featured thinly inked line drawings on variously shaped and decorated papers along with cutaway flaps and windows. Those pages are digitally reproduced here with automatic and touch-activated lifts, showers of figures or paper fragments, layers that move in different directions and other changes added—all with appropriate sound effects and short loops of wistful music in the background. Technically accomplished the special effects may be, but not only do they cause the screen to freeze while they’re loading, the slight twitches that cue active flaps and page turns are easy to miss. As are some of the scattered lines of small, hand-lettered text.
Visually distinctive and emotionally atmospheric, but the perfunctory storyline limits its audience appeal. (iPad storybook app. 6-8, adult)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pablo Curti
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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
A fair choice, but it may need some support to really blast off.
This rocket hopes to take its readers on a birthday blast—but there may or may not be enough fuel.
Once a year, a one-seat rocket shoots out from Earth. Why? To reveal a special congratulatory banner for a once-a-year event. The second-person narration puts readers in the pilot’s seat and, through a (mostly) ballad-stanza rhyme scheme (abcb), sends them on a journey toward the sun, past meteors, and into the Kuiper belt. The final pages include additional information on how birthdays are measured against the Earth’s rotations around the sun. Collingridge aims for the stars with this title, and he mostly succeeds. The rhyme scheme flows smoothly, which will make listeners happy, but the illustrations (possibly a combination of paint with digital enhancements) may leave the viewers feeling a little cold. The pilot is seen only with a 1960s-style fishbowl helmet that completely obscures the face, gender, and race by reflecting the interior of the rocket ship. This may allow readers/listeners to picture themselves in the role, but it also may divest them of any emotional connection to the story. The last pages—the backside of a triple-gatefold spread—label the planets and include Pluto. While Pluto is correctly labeled as a dwarf planet, it’s an unusual choice to include it but not the other dwarfs: Ceres, Eris, etc. The illustration also neglects to include the asteroid belt or any of the solar system’s moons.
A fair choice, but it may need some support to really blast off. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-18949-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: David Fickling/Phoenix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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