Dorros (Ten Go Tango, 2000, etc.) lets loose his usual bright humor, lively narrative, and momentum—here paired with the shining colors and kinetic characters in Greenseid’s (Chicken For a Day, not reviewed, etc.) art—but he beats an aggravating one-note tune with his Spanish lesson. Don Carlos can’t get enough, of everything: hats, ice cream, music, or choices of dishes for the menu at his village restaurant. Más, más, más is his leitmotif. When his younger brother, Alonzo, suggests that Don Carlos serve snails in his restaurant, he orders wheelbarrow loads: “Más.” When the profusion of snails run amok, Alonzo recommends birds to control them. “Más,” commands Don Carlos, then lots of pigs to control the birds. “Más.” Only when Alonzo forms a band—a bunch of dreadful hacks to accompany his heavenly violin—to serenade the pigs out of town, à la the Pied Piper, does Don Carlos beg for less: less earsplitting music. The point, of course, is that more is not necessarily better—in this case never, and the same applies to Don Carlos, whom readers will have had enough of shortly after his introduction. Thanks then to the rest of the trippingly fun story for keeping the book afloat. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-42030-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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