Though it treads perilously close to inspirational blandness, this book will serve to comfort those seeking friends of their...
The concept of friendship earns itself another tribute picture book, this time with crisp, stunning photographs to match.
“There, in the crowd, is someone— / who likes the things you like.” Brief text reassures readers that there’s a friend somewhere out there for everybody and then lists all the things such a pal could do as well as the additional benefits of what such a friendship would bring. All told, the text is a pep talk to the lonely, promising great companionship to come. Its near platitudes are ameliorated by the book’s eye-popping photographs of children and adults in 18 different countries. The backmatter includes a map of the world indicating where the photos were taken, quotes on friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson, C.S. Lewis, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a note to parents and caregivers that includes Web resources with “ideas on helping your kids make friends” as well as “resources on bullying.” The result is a book that seems to hope to serve a very specific type of reader—the lonely kind—while also reaching for universality. Perhaps surprisingly, in the end it works, the world photography going a long way toward supporting its overarching goal.
Though it treads perilously close to inspirational blandness, this book will serve to comfort those seeking friends of their own and inspire others to expand their friendship circles. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4263-1905-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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