This weird pig's unsatisfying story perhaps should have stayed a mystery.
The mystery of a porcine stranger who steals food in the night is solved in a spookily crafted story from Chile.
Two boys, Rafa and Juan, accustomed to playing in the hills after dark, encounter a scary creature, one who has been raiding their town for food. The culprit is revealed to be the Pig's Head, who stands upright and wears clothes but is otherwise just a very hungry pig. Despite some design flourishes and an animation style that makes the pencil art layered with color appear to pop off the page, the story itself is a mess. Some uncomfortable hypotheses about the creature’s origin are explored (yes, that means implied bestiality), and many parents of younger readers won't be thrilled with a page with the sentence, "Hes [sic] ugly as Hell!" Text on an opening page is either badly translated or just poorly written: "One evening, the children found a scary creature, from which they have always heard, but never believed that existed, until then." The clever bits, such as a page with a variety of animals to colorize by touch, are outweighed by clunky storytelling. The app's sole extra feature, a song performed by the titular monster, completely fails to engage.
This weird pig's unsatisfying story perhaps should have stayed a mystery. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 5-10)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Cangrejo Ideas
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
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