With help from a hippo and an accident-prone little sister, a child explains library rules in this bubbly debut from Meng. A sequence of linked events begins with an attack of hiccups, which, the narrator notes, makes people laugh—particularly in quiet places like the library. Hiccups can be cured by big surprises, such as finding a hippo in the tree outside the library—and hippos are good for transportation home, along with other things. And best of all, returning a stack of finished books that have been thrown, dropped, used as plates for ice cream, swallowed by a hippo and then vomited up (treatment that many actual library items evidently receive, as any public-library worker will attest) on time earns the reward of a library card. Pedersen’s lighthearted cartoons feature a big hippo, two expressively posed young patrons and a staid-looking librarian with the inner stuff to climb a ladder to the roof when, for instance, a little sister has to be rescued. Faintly reminiscent of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, this introduction doesn’t exactly model best practices, but it does state them in ways that children will laughingly absorb. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-59544-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Having neither aged nor mellowed since his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), Alexander digs in his heels as the rest of the family packs up to move. Taking him as seriously as he apparently takes himself, his parents suggest he pay last visits to favorite people and places, so off he stomps, loudly declaring his intention to stay. Glasser is a skilled copyist; the black-and- white drawings, stated on the cover to be rendered ``in the style of Ray Cruz'' (he illustrated the first book), modernize clothing but leave furniture, family, and toys in a time warp. The resolution doesn't break new ground either; going-away presents, the promise of a puppy, and the prospect of a room of his own buy Alexander's consent. For Viorst, that's just treading water. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-689-31958-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More rhymed foolery from Small (George Washington's Cows, 1994, etc.), with an ending that may seem cold-hearted to some, and subtexts that don't bear too much scrutiny. When Hoover, a balding, middle-aged bachelor, sees Elektra the vacuum cleaner sweeping up mountains of dust, he falls rapturously in love. They are soon married (``While this seems like the strangest alliance,/I now pronounce you Man and Appliance''), but their honeymoon at the posh Hotel Dunes is interrupted when Elektra runs off with a newlywed power lawn mower from across the hall. Hoover and the mower's distraught spouse have their marriages annulled and live happily ever after; the eloping machines meet a harsher fate, immediately ending up at the city dump. The moral: ``It's good to have humans aboard/When you run out of gas, or run out of cord.'' In the cleanly drawn watercolors Elektra, a small canister model, peeps coyly up from the floor as genteel humans react with comically exaggerated gestures and expressions. As usual, Small displays both sharp wit and a lively imagination, but this is flat next to his other books, which are mostly about the value of being different rather than its perils. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-59707-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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