The appealing premise and occasional humor will probably carry readers past the obvious message of this predictable account...
Life gets dull when all your wishes come true.
That’s what sixth-grader Sam discovers after his wish for a million wishes comes true. At first, the white boy’s desires are those of any middle school boy—besting bullies, acquiring large sums of money and superpowers, experimenting with being very large and very small, and flying. He improves things for others in his family: his father's job, his mother's art career, his sister's boyfriend, his brother's nits. Eventually, prompted by his best friend, Evan, he turns to problems in the larger world: he cures Evan's terminally ill father, changes things in a bullying schoolmate’s home, experiments with trying to make everyone in the world nice, and bans death. It’s not until he tries to ban all problems that he realizes that problems are part of life; now his biggest problem is to get rid of all his remaining wishes. This English import includes both interesting philosophical musings about the consequences of wishing and speculations about practical consequences: a giant-sized fast-food burger is nearly inedible; while tiny, Sam is carried away by a sparrow hawk. Sam’s voice is young and believably self-centered, but he does learn that things are better when you have to work for them.
The appealing premise and occasional humor will probably carry readers past the obvious message of this predictable account of wish-fulfillment gone awry. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-90410-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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