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BUMPLES, FUMDIDLERS, AND JELLYBEANS

Name: BUMPLES, FUMDIDLERS, AND JELLYBEANS
Author: Arnold Spilka
ISBN: 0-395-74522-5

by Arnold Spilka & illustrated by Arnold Spilka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1996

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As is also true of the title, only a third of this gathering of nonsense will go down easily. The occasional appetizing bits—``When the clown is sick,/he calls his wife/and she butters his head/with her buttery knife''—are lost in a gummy potage of dadaist wordplay and tedious verbal meanderings: ``Bumple snigglefritzers,/Are not really bumple snigglefritzers./They are really schwizzers who want to show off./So they cover their heads with lobular zilchers,'' etc. Rhythm and rhyme are established but seldom sustained, while the untitled verses swim in scribbled illustrations colored with thick, smudged crayon. In the last few pages Spilka's language suddenly becomes conventional, his tone more serious. This is even slighter than his last offering, Monkeys Write Terrible Letters (1994). (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-395-74522-5

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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WORKING COTTON

by Sherley Anne Williams & illustrated by Carole Byard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1992

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``We gets to the fields early, before it's even light. Sometimes I still be asleep.'' In grave cadences, young Shelan describes a day of picking with her migrant family. In one of Byard's powerful, impressionistic acrylics (repeated on the jacket), Shelan stares penetratingly at readers as she slumps wearily amid piles of cotton; otherwise, the figures here are stooped, shadowy, tragically impersonal images with lowered eyes. The artist and poet (the text is reworked from two of Williams's Peacock Poems, 1975) effectively capture a strong sense of family, of exhaustion at day's end, and, most poignantly, Shelan's isolation—children she meets in one field are generally gone by the next, and there seems to be no life for her or her family beyond their work. A brief, deeply felt portrait. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-15-299624-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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LITTLE EIGHT JOHN

by Jan Wahl & illustrated by Wil Clay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1992

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When Little Eight John's mother warns that misfortune will follow if he kicks the toad frogs, sits backwards on a chair, or counts his teeth, it only spurs him on; later, he laughs gleefully when the baby gets colic, the cow stops giving milk, and his family goes broke. Finally, after one transgression too many, terrifying Old Raw Head Bloody Bones changes the boy into a spot of jam; himself once again, he promises to mind. Wahl, who heard this story years ago ``along the back roads of West Virginia,'' retells it in simple, brief sentences that artfully evoke a country storyteller's pace and cadences. Clay's paintings, though warm and energetic, are more contrived, with characters often viewed several times in a scene. Cocky Little Eight John watches his parents' discomfiture with an exaggerated grin; disappointingly, his transformations are not shown; and the cartoony Old Raw Head is at odds with the illustrations' otherwise realistic style. An amusing but flawed rendition of this old-fashioned cautionary tale. (Folklore/Picture book. 6-8)