by Arthur Yorinks & Maurice Sendak ; illustrated by Maurice Sendak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
Reading more like a private joke (and a rather mean-spirited one at that) than a story, this posthumous effort may please...
Based on Sendak’s series of 10 illustrations of Czech nonsense rhymes, an equally nonsensical story.
According to Yorinks’ afterword, he and Sendak cooked it up on a lark, “riffing on a story that might turn these disparate pictures into a cohesive picture book.” “Cohesive” is a stretch. The title characters find themselves one day in Limboland, where a “maniac shepherd boy” apprises them of the sugar beets’ imminent nuptials. Told by a goat that if no one brings a present they will “all be stuck in Limboland forever,” and learning that there is only one possible present—the monster Bumbo’s bagpipes—they determine to secure it. Their peregrinations take them past myriad peculiar scenes: a wood chopper taking an axe to a loaf of bread, a bear sewing his wedding outfit, a man cooking a woman in a cauldron, and “an old woman from the old country…using mumbo-jumbo and heebie-jeebie,” among others. They successfully steal the bagpipes, attend the wedding, eat cake, and go home. The framed, full-page illustrations, each set opposite a block of text, are trademark Sendak, populated by doughy, white humans and expressive animals in an Old World setting. Each taken by itself presents a patently absurd scenario that invites readers unfamiliar with the original rhymes to speculate on its circumstances. However, the narrative imposed by Yorinks and Sendak both closes off that avenue of imagination and fails to present anything resembling a satisfying story. Yorinks writes of the initial “brainstorming session” that “all I specifically remember…is…both of us laughing like crazy.”
Reading more like a private joke (and a rather mean-spirited one at that) than a story, this posthumous effort may please scholars but is likely to disappoint readers hoping for a new Sendak on par with his earlier works . (Picture book. 5-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-264465-7
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Michael di Capua/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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by Arthur Yorinks ; illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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by E.B. White & illustrated by Maggie Kneen
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams
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by R.J. Palacio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2012
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder.
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After being home-schooled for years, Auggie Pullman is about to start fifth grade, but he’s worried: How will he fit into middle school life when he looks so different from everyone else?
Auggie has had 27 surgeries to correct facial anomalies he was born with, but he still has a face that has earned him such cruel nicknames as Freak, Freddy Krueger, Gross-out and Lizard face. Though “his features look like they’ve been melted, like the drippings on a candle” and he’s used to people averting their eyes when they see him, he’s an engaging boy who feels pretty ordinary inside. He’s smart, funny, kind and brave, but his father says that having Auggie attend Beecher Prep would be like sending “a lamb to the slaughter.” Palacio divides the novel into eight parts, interspersing Auggie’s first-person narrative with the voices of family members and classmates, wisely expanding the story beyond Auggie’s viewpoint and demonstrating that Auggie’s arrival at school doesn’t test only him, it affects everyone in the community. Auggie may be finding his place in the world, but that world must find a way to make room for him, too.
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86902-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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