Neubecker should have called it quits after his amazing Wow! School! (2007).
The same brother-sister duo from Winter is for Snow (2013) this time looks at fall’s big marker: the start of school.
Whereas the brother was the cheerleader for winter, now it’s the sister talking up all the pros about school—learning about Romans, pyramids, mummies, and prehistoric beasts; recess; studying math; music and art classes; reading and writing stories—while the brother finds only the negatives. Until she starts to talk about the pumpkin drop, that is, and finally gets him to change his mind about school. This outing suffers from some of the same flaws as the first: the rhyming verses are bland and sometimes misfire, the boy’s change of heart is rather sudden, and this is still more of a list than a story. In addition, readers may wonder how this boy’s “baby” sister knows so much about going to school—down to the subjects studied and the special activities they will do—especially since she seems to be pretty advanced with regard to vocabulary and subjects she is familiar with (she is wearing a backpack of her own, so maybe both are returning to school, not starting?). Neubecker’s illustrations show the small girl pontificating while leading her brother to school through the city, her imagined scenes taking up large swaths of the spreads. Both are white redheads. Her verses are in red, while his responses are in blue.
Neubecker should have called it quits after his amazing Wow! School! (2007).Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-3254-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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