Saltzberg (The Flying Garbanzos, not reviewed, etc.) gives parent cheerleaders a boost with this droll tale of a young soccer player and his excitable mom. Starting his first season with the Atomic Pickles, Ruben is horribly embarrassed to see his mother on the sidelines, dressed in a pickle costume and screaming wildly. Oblivious to the positive reception she's getting from his teammates and the other parents, he persuades her at last to lay off—only to hear complaints from every side, and to see the parents, in pickle costumes of their own, float down in a green blimp. Ruben’s mom shows not a trace of self-consciousness in the simply drawn cartoon illustrations; the silly outfits will have viewers in stitches. And in a hilarious final twist, it all turns out to be a story told by grownup Ruben to prepare his daughter, looking forward to her first game with a team called the Galactic Grapes, to welcome a suitably attired cheering section of her own. Parents and children both will benefit from this ribtickler. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-517-80063-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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As a writer of verse, Preller, author of Six Innings (2008), makes an excellent prose novelist. His rhymed tale of a Little League nonhitter who lights a fire in his team of total losers shows plenty of heart, if shaky scansion. Winless for the season and trailing five-zip in the first inning, it looks like just another long day for the Delmar Dogs—“Omar scraped a knee; / grape juice spilled on Lapinski’s shoe; / Ronald the runt had to pee, / and figured left field would do”—but with urging from no-hit, no-field Casey (a lefty, as it happens), the team puts on a rally, and it’s Casey’s hit with the bases loaded that brings victory within grasp. Cordell’s simply drawn cartoons of geeky, distracted children sporting oversized batting helmets suit this lightweight remake of a certain famous baseball ballad, and if the author doesn’t quite recapture the original’s tone or suspense (or ending), he may get young readers and their parents who take the game a little too seriously to lighten up a touch. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36764-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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