Distress gives way to relief in this you-are-there tale for young readers and listeners who enjoy real-life animal...
A dramatic dolphin rescue tale told by a young eyewitness named Nicole.
When three dolphins are trapped in a cove by sheets of ice blown in by a winter storm, five brave young men, including the narrator’s brother Aaron, come to their aid. Based on an actual incident in Newfoundland in 2009, this life-and-death story will resonate with readers as much as it did with the western Canadian writers and illustrator who gave it a new life. To Nicole and others in her small coastal town, the cries of the trapped dolphins sound like an SOS, a call for help, but officials can’t help. No icebreaker is available. It’s up to a group of sympathetic townspeople to save the animals’ lives. Wearing survival suits and using a small boat in an operation that takes over five hours, they are successful. Nicole’s storytelling is straightforward. The spare text is set in a sea of whites and grays, a stark reminder of this moving rescue’s chilly setting. Flett’s equally spare illustrations show stylized figures. Spots of color break up the black-and-white patterns in these digitally combined collages. Notes about white-beaked dolphins and the actual incident are appended.
Distress gives way to relief in this you-are-there tale for young readers and listeners who enjoy real-life animal encounters. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-896580-76-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tradewind Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As Captain Awesome would say, this kid is “MI-TEE!” (Fiction. 5-8)
The town of Sunnyview got a little bit safer when 8-year-old Eugene McGillicudy moved in.
Just like his comic-book mentor, Super Dude, Eugene, aka Captain Awesome, is on a one-man mission is to save the world from supervillains, like the nefarious “Queen Stinkypants from Planet Baby.” Just as Eugene suspected, plenty of new supervillains await him at Sunnyview Elementary. Are Meredith Mooney and the mind-reading Ms. Beasley secretly working together to try and force Eugene to reveal his secret identity? Will Principal Brick Foot succeed in throwing Captain Awesome into the “Dungeon of Detention?” Fortunately, Eugene isn’t forced to go it alone. Charlie Thomas Jones, fellow comic-book lover and Super Dude fan, stands ready and willing to help. When the class hamster goes missing, Captain Awesome must don his cape and, with the help of his new best friend, ride to the rescue. Kirby’s funny and engaging third-person narration and O’Connor’s hilarious illustrations make the book easily accessible and enormously appealing, particularly to readers who have recently graduated to chapter books. But it is the quirky, mischievous Eugene that really makes this book special. His energy and humor are contagious, and his dogged commitment to his superhero alter ego is enough to make anyone a believer.
As Captain Awesome would say, this kid is “MI-TEE!” (Fiction. 5-8)Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4090-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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