It is not widely known that Paul Bunyan had a wife and two children—much less that they created Kentucky's Mammoth Caves, California's Big Sur, the Rocky Mountains, and several other ``natural'' wonders—including, some say, the huge face photographed by Viking I on the surface of Mars. How fortunate readers are to have the Bunyans' exploits chronicled at last—and with such verbal and visual gusto. Tall-tale fans will find new heroes in gigantic Teeny, with her purple puma, Slink, and Jean, a born sculptor (Bryce Canyon) and the first Bunyan to leave the planet; they'll laugh to see Old Faithful steamcleaning a gargantuan stack of dirty dishes, or the happy parents in retirement, dressed in shorts and slacks, playing croquet with the tools of their trade. Wood's text is short and direct, Shannon sprinkles his landscapes with tiny details that make his doll-like figures all the more towering, and together they make the best match since Anne Isaacs and Paul Zelinsky teamed up for Swamp Angel (1995). (Picture book/folklore. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-590-48089-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Relentlessly facile—but if action ever begins with goal visualization, at least a place to start.
Following Touch the Earth (2017), young readers are invited to fly on further missions of mercy to our beleaguered planet and its residents.
A feather converts with a tap on the image of a button in the right-hand corner of the spread and a page turn to a White Feather Flier (named after Lennon’s charitable White Feather Foundation) that transports, in Coh’s misty, painted pictures, a thoroughly diverse quartet of children to a variety of troubled places. They visit in succession a town whose residents lack medical services, a bleached coral reef, a drab urban neighborhood, and a clear-cut rainforest. At every stop, further taps on a button image bring instant relief: The Flier becomes a mobile hospital; “zooks” (zooxanthellae, depicted as tiny green cells with smiley faces) return to give the reef color and life; the city gets a new green space; and the devastated forest’s flora and fauna are restored to lush life. Following vague exhortations to “work together” and to “make healing an adventure,” Lennon concludes with six solo-credited stanzas of similarly airy sentiment: “Come together, see it through, / End disease and hunger too. / Help the children, one and all. / Winter, Summer, Spring, and Fall.” Thoughtfully, the humans in need are depicted as diverse and not uniformly brown; slightly less thoughtfully, one of the two brown-skinned children among the helpers is depicted with knotted hair that recalls the pickaninny stereotype.
Relentlessly facile—but if action ever begins with goal visualization, at least a place to start. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2853-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Doubles down on a basic math concept with a bit of character development.
A child who insists on having MORE of everything gets MORE than she can handle.
Demanding young Moxie Jo is delighted to discover that pushing the button on a stick she finds in the yard doubles anything she points to. Unfortunately, when she points to her puppy, Max, the button gets stuck—and in no time one dog has become two, then four, then eight, then….Readers familiar with the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” or Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona will know how this is going to go, and Masse obliges by filling up succeeding scenes with burgeoning hordes of cute yellow puppies enthusiastically making a shambles of the house. McKellar puts an arithmetical spin on the crisis—“The number of pups exponentially grew: / They each multiplied times a factor of 2!” When clumsy little brother Clark inadvertently intervenes, Moxie Jo is left wiser about her real needs (mostly). An appended section uses lemons to show how exponential doubling quickly leads to really big numbers. Stuart J. Murphy’s Double the Ducks (illustrated by Valeria Petrone, 2002) in the MathStart series explores doubling from a broader perspective and includes more backmatter to encourage further study, but this outing adds some messaging: Moxie Jo’s change of perspective may give children with sharing issues food for thought. She and her family are White; her friends are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Doubles down on a basic math concept with a bit of character development. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-101-93386-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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