Epic storytelling erupts on the page without the use of a single word. Superb.
Caldecott Honoree Becker’s dystopian imaginings once more find fruit in picture-book format.
The biblical Noah as a gargantuan robot? Stranger things have been conceived of. In flooded lands replete with incredibly detailed architecture (think David Macaulay meets WALL-E’s world) but with no humans in sight, a towering yellow robot, the word NOA on its arm, powered by wind turbines from its back, sets forth to collect all the animals of the world. The waters rise to NOA’s knees, but still our robotic avatar collects with infinite kindness every giraffe, panda, tiger, and elephant it can find. The crumbling world around them hints at the zoos and circuses where once these creatures made their homes. Now, they sail away with NOA on a boat built by the automaton. This wordless tale outlines their struggles, from storm to shipwreck and, ultimately, to hope. The allusions to both Noah’s Ark and Eden are sly but ever present, set as they are against Becker’s sumptuous watercolor and pen-and-ink backdrops. Here, the very existence of life on Earth hangs in the balance, and the stakes have never been higher. Minute details pepper each scene, giving sharp-eyed readers the chance to find something new every time they page through this book (like the fact that the meat-eating tigers are kept in their own separate cage on the robot’s boat). True fans will find themselves poring over these pictures for hours.
Epic storytelling erupts on the page without the use of a single word. Superb. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781536227680
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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