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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It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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