Joseph may have Had a Little Overcoat (1999) and another Joseph a “coat of many colors,” but neither sported outerwear like the outsized garment with magic buttons that swirls and flows about this generous youngster’s skinny ankles. On her dancing way she encounters a frozen swan and a giant who’s wilting under the hot sun, a small elf who needs somebody to love, three rabbits menaced by a snake, a ship in a storm—and look, there’s a button to remedy each ill. Nor does she hesitate to give them away, though to her parents’ dismay it leaves her (seemingly) buttonless. To Cullen’s rollicking dactyls Christiana matches splashy, spacious scenes rendered in bright, transparent colors, changing point of view on nearly every spread until the triumphant conclusion, in which the child finds the missing buttons in her pocket, and everyone she’s helped appears at the door to help her sing the adventure out. “It’s fashion, it’s couture, it’s high, and it’s haute, / That megacooliferous, / truly meltificent . . . mostly just marvelous coat!” A showstopping, imagination-stretching debut for Cullen, visually on par with Christiana’s previous extravaganza, Nancy Willard’s The Tale I Told Sasha (1999). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-316-16334-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
A trite, knock-off sequel to Jumanji (1981). The “Jumanji” box distracts Walter Budwing away from beating up on his little brother Danny, but it’s Danny who discovers the Zathura board inside—and in no time, Earth is far behind, a meteor has smashed through the roof, and a reptilian Zyborg pirate is crawling through the hole. Each throw of the dice brings an ominous new development, portrayed in grainy, penciled freeze frames featuring sculptured-looking figures in constricted, almost claustrophobic settings. The angles of view are, as always, wonderfully dramatic, but not only is much of the finer detail that contributed to Jumanji’s astonishing realism missing, the spectacular damage being done to the Budwings’ house as the game progresses is, by and large, only glimpsed around the picture edges. Naturally, having had his bacon repeatedly saved by his younger sibling’s quick thinking, once Walter falls through a black hole to a time preceding the game’s start, his attitude toward Danny undergoes a sudden, radical transformation. Van Allsburg’s imagination usually soars right along with his accomplished art—but here, both are just running in place. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-25396-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary...
Refined, spit-spot–tidy illustrations infuse a spare adaptation of the 1934 classic with proper senses of decorum and wonder.
Novesky leaves out much—the Bird Woman, Adm. Boom, that ethnically problematic world tour, even Mr. and Mrs. Banks—but there’s still plenty going on. Mary Poppins introduces Jane and Michael (their twin younger sibs are mentioned but seem to be left at home throughout) to the Match-Man and the buoyant Mr. Wigg, lets them watch Mrs. Corry and her daughters climb tall ladders to spangle the night sky with gilt stars, and takes them to meet the zoo animals (“Bird and beast, star and stone—we are all one,” says the philosophical bear). At last, when the wind changes, she leaves them with an “Au revoir!” (“Which means, Dear Reader, ‘to meet again.’ ”) Slender and correct, though with dangling forelocks that echo and suggest the sweeping curls of wind that bring her in and carry her away, Mary Poppins takes the role of impresario in Godbout’s theatrically composed scenes, bearing an enigmatic smile throughout but sharing with Jane and Michael (and even the parrot-headed umbrella) an expression of wide-eyed, alert interest as she shepherds them from one marvelous encounter to the next. The Corrys have brown skin; the rest of the cast presents white.
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, which opens in December 2018. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-91677-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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