Fans of Kate and Jim McMullan’s I Stink! (2002) will welcome this look-alike, sound-alike return visit, as a pair of bright green trucks with backward-looking red eyes and huge mouths (even, in one startling scene, an oversized tongue) consume with relish a smorgasbord of broken furniture and garbage: “Rotten eggs? / Apple cores? / Pack ’em in—the engine ROARS. / Stinky diapers? / Coffee grounds? / Load it UP and smash it DOWN.” It’s all served up by a crew of cheerful pigs in overalls as an audience of dogs (plus a pair of exuberant piglets in an upstairs room, awakened by the din) looks on. Coloring the urban backdrops purple for this predawn banquet, Hillenbrand effectively captures the ickiness of all the soiled or overripe “entrées,” but leaves the sidewalks and battered cans neat and litter free as the trucks careen off to their next stop. Young audiences will be happy to crash and bash right along with these familiar mechanical Wild Things. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-689-85160-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
Murphy’s latest entry in his popular MathStart series of easy-to-read math concept stories focuses on the 100th day of school celebration often observed in elementary school classrooms. At the beginning of the school year a group of five children at first think the idea is 100 days of cool (rather than school), so they arrive for the first day in wild costumes and funny glasses. They rather like their misconception and the resulting esprit de corps, so they resolve to continue their pursuit of cool by sporting a different distinguishing trait each day. They try wearing special clothing, dying their hair, walking backward, decorating their bikes, and volunteering as a group, leading up to a celebratory party on day 100. A number line at the top of each spread tracks the progression of days toward 100, with additional conceptual points about fractions inserted in speech-balloon comments. The cool/school word play wears thin quickly, and the efforts of the group aren’t particularly novel or funny. Bendall-Brunello does his best with watercolor-and-pencil illustrations that attempt to make the multi-ethnic group of kids lively and peppy, but this effort remains lukewarm. (author’s note) (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-000121-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
Pairing a rhymed text to digitally colored “Spy-vs.-Spy” style cartoons, Rash sends a secret agent out on a quest to find the ringer among his 25 associates. Agents on the up and up are linked to a same-letter device or action: “Agent M has got a solar / Microphone inside his molar”; “Agent W attacks / a spy she didn’t know was Wax.” Eventually, Agent A concludes that he must be the culprit, but he’s quickly exonerated for having found the Answer, and joins all the other men (and women) in black for a group boogie. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom this isn’t, but some of the rhymes are clever, and there’s a movie in miniature, or at least a familiar scenario, on nearly every page. (Picture book. 7-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-36882-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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