It's a mess, riddled with typos, botched wording and grating sound cues. The moral here is obvious: The person who fails to...
Shoddy, sloppy and badly translated, this collection of five fables is as baffling as it is crude.
Apparently "[translated] from Ancient Greek" by Casanova into Italian and then translated into English, according to the credits page, this collection includes short, lightly animated versions of "The Fox and the Grapes," "The Grasshopper and the Ants," "The Lion and the Dolphin," "The Fox and the Crow" and "The Tortoise and the Hare." There's no voice narration, which is a blessing, given the clunky, near-indecipherable text that accompanies each story. The conclusion of "The Fox and the Grapes," for instance, offers this stunner of a garbled moral: "Those who do not succeed in realising their aims because they are not able to do so, often disdain that which they did not succeed in doing." Good luck parsing that one, kids. Most disturbingly, each tale of wretched animals in moral quandaries ends with a near-naked old man (Aesop, presumably) whom readers must dress in order to unlock the moral. The old man shows up five times in five separate states of partial nudity, leaving readers to wonder if he may have a serious problem. Even apart from these significant problems, the app also suffers from poor navigation, lackluster artwork and leaps of logic too big to ignore even for a fanciful children's app. For the record, lions and dolphins cannot shake hands.
It's a mess, riddled with typos, botched wording and grating sound cues. The moral here is obvious: The person who fails to steer clear of this app will find much to regret. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Progetto Rosetta
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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Sadly, the storytelling runs aground.
A little red sleigh has big Christmas dreams.
Although the detailed, full-color art doesn’t anthropomorphize the protagonist (which readers will likely identify as a sled and not a sleigh), a close third-person text affords the object thoughts and feelings while assigning feminine pronouns. “She longed to become Santa’s big red sleigh,” reads an early line establishing the sleigh’s motivation to leave her Christmas-shop home for the North Pole. Other toys discourage her, but she perseveres despite creeping self-doubt. A train and truck help the sleigh along, and when she wishes she were big, fast, and powerful like them, they offer encouragement and counsel patience. When a storm descends after the sleigh strikes out on her own, an unnamed girl playing in the snow brings her to a group of children who all take turns riding the sleigh down a hill. When the girl brings her home, the sleigh is crestfallen she didn’t reach the North Pole. A convoluted happily-ever-after ending shows a note from Santa that thanks the sleigh for giving children joy and invites her to the North Pole next year. “At last she understood what she was meant to do. She would build her life up spreading joy, one child at a time.” Will she leave the girl’s house to be gifted to other children? Will she stay and somehow also reach ever more children? Readers will be left wondering. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 31.8% of actual size.)
Sadly, the storytelling runs aground. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72822-355-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
A forgettable effort that fails to capture any of the magical charm of Santa’s story. (Picture book. 3-6)
Wallace and Elkerton continue their series about catching elusive mythical creatures (How to Catch a Leprechaun, 2016, etc.) with this Christmas story about an elf who must avoid traps constructed by children before Santa’s annual visit.
The unnamed elf narrator is the sole helper traveling with Santa on his delivery rounds on Christmas Eve, with each house featuring a different type of trap for elves. The spunky elf avoids a mechanical “elf snatcher,” hidden in a plate of cookies, as well as simple traps made of tinsel, double-sided tape, and a cardboard box concealing a mean-looking cat. Another trap looks like a bomb hidden in a box of candy, and a complicated trap in a maze has an evil cowboy clown with a branding iron, leading to the elf’s cry, “Hey, you zapped my tushy!” The bomb trap and the branding iron seem to push the envelope of child-made inventions. The final trap is located in a family grocery store that’s booby-trapped with a “Dinner Cannon” shooting out food, including a final pizza that the elf and Santa share. The singsong, rhyming text has a forced cheeriness, full of golly-jolly-holly Christmas spirit and too many exclamation marks, as well as rhyming word pairs that miss the mark. (No, little elf-boy, “smarter” and “harder” do not rhyme.) Bold, busy illustrations in a cartoon style have a cheeky appeal with a focus on the freckle-faced white elf with auburn curls and a costume with a retro vibe. (Santa is also white.)
A forgettable effort that fails to capture any of the magical charm of Santa’s story. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4631-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2016
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BOOK REVIEW
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