A contemporary piece of ancientness, suitable to be passed around the campfire or the bedside.
In what feels like a diminutive creation tale of old, young psychopomp Finnley finds himself ushering in a whole new star.
Finnley is charged with ushering the souls (in the shape of bouncy black balls) of Earthland through a seemingly abandoned, possibly but not necessarily grim wilderness to the Gate, an elevator to take the souls upward and transform them into stars. The souls are led to the Gate by the light of Finnley’s crook, for otherwise all is penumbral: a deep sapphire-blue sky, the landscape in shadow. It’s a pretty lonely life. After one soul eschews the Gate and instead flies into Finnley’s crook, a wolf named Sirius appears. Sirius soon becomes Finnley’s herding companion—those souls have minds of their own—and friend. Tragedy strikes, but it’s the kind of tragedy that has profound, beneficial cosmological ramifications—bright as a supernova. The story is low-key if arbitrary in a folkloric kind of way, the spooky more beguiling than not, and the writing, an amusing blend of modern idiom and heightened language. There is no interaction beyond page turns, but the souls bounce gently, and the music and narration are both well-suited to the tale.
A contemporary piece of ancientness, suitable to be passed around the campfire or the bedside. (iPad storybook app. 5-10)Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Alexa Kril
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Children will be swept up in Wesley’s vision, and have a fine time visiting Weslandia. An alphabet appears on the endpapers.
Wearing purple sneakers and a bemused expression, Wesley knows he’s an outcast: he dislikes pizza, soda, and football, and fleeing his tormentors is “the only sport he was good at.”
When he learns that each civilization has its own staple food crop, he takes as his summer project turning over a plot of ground in the back yard, and seeds brought by the wind begin to grow. Wesley can’t find the plants in any book, but the fruit and the juice are delicious, as are the tubers on the roots. He makes a hat from the bark and a robe from the inner fibers, and sells the seed oil to his former enemies as a suntan lotion/mosquito repellent. It isn’t long before he’s moved out to the yard, and invents an alphabet and a whole raft of sports for the place he calls Weslandia. In sumptuously detailed illustrations, Hawkes has vividly imagined Fleischman’s puckish text, capturing both the blandness of Wesley’s suburban surroundings and then the fabulous encroachment of the rainforest-like vegetation of his green and growing place.
Children will be swept up in Wesley’s vision, and have a fine time visiting Weslandia. An alphabet appears on the endpapers. (Picture book 5-9)Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0006-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999
BOOK TO SCREEN
The creepy-crawly close-up photo of a hairy spider on the cover will have kids (and adults) saying “Yuck!” while they grab the book to look for more inside. As with other Simon photographic nonfiction, this presents information on spiders in easy, understandable prose. The facts are made relative—for example, “jumping spiders can leap a distance of 40 times the length of its own body, the same as if you jumped the length of two basketball courts and made a slam dunk.” Examples interestingly describe the facts, e.g., “some spider silk is three times stronger than steel wire of the same thickness.” This is casual nonfiction, no chapters, categories, or index, but the amazing close-up color photos make the almost conversational text captivating. A subject that both fascinates and repels at the same time, this mini-documentary will have kids spinning their own stories about the spiders they’ve now discovered. (Nonfiction. 6-10)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-028391-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2003
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
