Percy doesn’t seem to have much of a destiny beyond chasing his favorite ball, but perhaps that is the point.
A black-and-white dog plays with his canine pals at a dog park, culminating in an encounter with a feisty, ball-stealing squirrel.
Percy is a bright-eyed dog of indeterminate breed, with a long, skinny tail and a black spot over one eye. He narrates the story with just a few words and a snappy attitude, using witty expressions such as “my little porkie pie” as a nickname for his beloved, special ball. (The genially archaic, repeated “What ho!” may raise more than a few eyebrows, given its unfortunate homonymic relationship to the modern slur.) Percy meets up with his three canine friends at the dog park, each having brought along a favorite toy. Molly is a standard poodle who carries a bandanna, Oatmeal Raisin Cookie is a dachshund with a Frisbee, and Fluffy is a huge, fierce-looking but gentle fellow toting a correspondingly huge bone. At the park, the dogs play together until a sassy squirrel faces off with Percy, trying to steal his ball. When the squirrel swipes Percy’s ball and then flings it from a tree, Fluffy solves the problem by leaping up to catch it. Minimalist, digitally produced illustrations use white backgrounds and a muted color palette to complement the sophisticated tone of the text. Percy’s long, pointed tail (presumably in perpetual motion) is frequently depicted as three distinct appendages; since there are no motion lines to help readers decode this, it appears that the dog is a tri-tailed anomaly.
Percy doesn’t seem to have much of a destiny beyond chasing his favorite ball, but perhaps that is the point. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59078-984-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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
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