Cabby could use a little less catnip and lot more refining. (iPad storybook app. 6-10)
After leaving his cello in the trunk of a cab, a world-renowned musician enlists help to recover his prized instrument.
This scattered storybook app has plenty of character and a few nice technological twists, but it’s so weighed down with peripheral stimuli and superfluous content that getting through it is downright laborious. Mo-Mo Ya, a pig, leaves his cello in the trunk of Cabby Cat’s taxi. A band of street musicians, the Hound Dogs, covets the million-dollar instrument and steals it out of the cab. Ya and his entourage track the thieves down, forgive everything and then immediately form a band and play a two-hour concert. The story is allegedly based on true events, but the narrative has so many gaps, it’s not easily swallowed. On the plus side, the 3-D rotation and zooming add a unique flair, and the rendition of Elgar’s Cello Concerto is fabulous. Several New York landmarks are highlighted with brief, pop-up history lessons, and the personality of the Big Apple shines throughout. Certain tasks, several of which are inane (a color-identification game at Ya’s hotel check-in desk, for instance), must be performed before an arrow appears to advance to the next page. At times the dreadful, rhymed text doesn’t match narration, and sentences that are split over page turns often require backtracking to determine context. The app does not work on first-generation iPads.
Cabby could use a little less catnip and lot more refining. (iPad storybook app. 6-10)Pub Date: May 28, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: 2Dads in Brooklyn
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
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