Four fable favorites cleverly repackaged.
Four of Aesop’s familiar fables feature wily fox shamelessly tricking his fellow creatures, followed by their gleeful retaliation, strung together in one continuous if episodic narrative.
First, hungry fox fails to retrieve a luscious bunch of grapes from a tree. To save his dignity, fox announces the grapes “are quite sour,” proving it’s “easy to scorn what you cannot get.” Then, fox encounters crow with cheese in her beak. When fox cleverly asks if crows really do have amazing voices, crow opens her mouth to caw, dropping the cheese. As he gobbles crow’s cheese, fox moralizes, “never trust a flatterer.” In his smugness at this victory, fox stumbles into a well—and then tricks hapless goat into helping him escape. Leaving goat in the well, fox warns to “look before you leap.” And finally, “one bad turn deserves another,” when goat, crow and stork give fox his just deserts. Lowry cleverly incorporates the four fables into a single story sequence with each fable adding to the theme of fox’s self-centered dishonesty. Pale gouache-and-pencil illustrations in muted greens, browns and greys provide a subdued, understated backdrop to fox’s self-serving antics while emphasizing the very human behavior of each animal character.
Four fable favorites cleverly repackaged. (author’s note, morals) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2400-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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