This preachy, pedestrian cautionary tale isn’t going to convince many children to change their ways. Simia, a young monkey, wants everything. But the flower she grabs on a tree branch turns out to be attached to a thorny cactus, a beautiful orange object is a snarling jaguar, a zigzag shape is a snake that “uncoiled itself and shot into the air” (say what?), a “coconut” turns out to be a wasp’s nest, and so on. Later, Simia picks a flower that wilts, snatches a pretty stone from playmates and throws it into the lake, then almost falls out of a tree reaching for the moon. Mother monkey hammers the lesson home: “ ‘Some things are for yourself, some things are for others, and some things . . . are for everyone to share. You don’t have to own things to enjoy them.’ ” Instantly, Simia is satisfied. Right. Walters (Are You There, Baby Bear?, 1999) sets her little monkey into a series of lush, if static, forest scenes. An also-ran next to such similarly themed books as Marcia Brown’s How, Hippo (1969) and Kate Banks’s Baboon (1997). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56656-376-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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IN THE NEWS
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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