Fantasy and reality merge as two spunky tooth fairies in an Australian suburb complete their first assignment with aplomb. When seven-year-old April Underhill and her younger sister Esme agree to retrieve Daniel Dangerfield's front milk tooth, their parents worry they are too young for their first solo mission. Reluctantly acquiescing, the Underhills dispatch the girls with a string carrier bag for the coin plus a warning that Daniel must not see them. Negotiating the congested motorway and tricky air currents, the teeny girls descend on wee wings to 3 Cornflower Terrace, follow the trail of toys to Daniel's room and dive into his water glass to fetch the tooth. All goes smoothly until Daniels wakes, forcing the girls to text their mother for advice. Delicate ink, watercolor and pastel illustrations provide humorous, incongruous details of the winged Underhills' bucolic existence in a flower-filled thatched cottage adjacent the trash-lined motorway. Sporting cell phones, jeans and even a tattoo, the modern Underhills innocently continue their tooth-fairy traditions despite the less-than-magical outside world. So very charming, touching and heartwarming. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4683-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
With four likable, diverse characters and the surefire appeal of cute puppies and other pets, the Critter Club is off to a...
Amy, left alone while her friends travel or are otherwise occupied during break, solves a mystery in this series opener.
Amy whiles away her time helping with her mother’s veterinary practice. She misses her friends but looks forward to their next sleepover when everyone returns. When she’s not busy, she dives into her newest Nancy Drew book. When her mother’s wealthiest client’s puppy, Rufus, goes missing, it’s time for Amy to use what she has learned from Nancy Drew to find the little Saint Bernard. When she does, the millionaire client generously plans to start a local shelter, at which the four friends can volunteer, opening the door for further adventures of the Critter Club. A mystery for emerging chapter-book readers has to provide easy-to-see clues, and this one does, enabling readers to solve the mystery right along with Amy. At times, the narrative is a bit too obvious: There is probably no need to have a full paragraph explaining the purpose of a vet’s office nor descriptions of the girls’ physical characteristics, given that each page is illustrated.
With four likable, diverse characters and the surefire appeal of cute puppies and other pets, the Critter Club is off to a promising start. (Mystery. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-5770-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
Readers will roll up for repeats, and not just because of the name on the cover.
Hanging out with grandad turns out to be anything but boring after he pulls out a very special compass and takes everyone on a magical mystery tour.
A “gray and drizzly” day takes a series of exciting turns for Lucy, Tom, Em, and Bob—a racially diverse quartet of sibs (or maybe cousins) in Durst’s fluid, informal cartoon scenes—after grizzled Grandude strides into the room. He has a compass that transports him and the “Chillers” with a “zing, bang, sizzle” to a beach, a desert, and a Swiss mountainside. Like the economical text, which aside from a quick refrain is all in prose, experiences at each stop take on a certain pattern as the children thrice enjoy their new setting but then need a quick spin of the compass to escape a flood of pinchy red crabs, mount horses but narrowly avoid a bison stampede, then abandon a picnic to clamber atop an obliging flying cow when an avalanche threatens. Despite the allusive title (and the “Grandude” moniker, which McCartney admits he cribbed from his own grandkids) there’s no sign of the self-absorption that often rides celebrity picture books. Ultimately, the genial tour guide, who is white but otherwise looks nothing like the author and even plays guitar right-handed, spins the compass one final time to deliver the weary Chillers back home.
Readers will roll up for repeats, and not just because of the name on the cover. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-64867-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2019
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