This clever celebration of individuality delights.
A sublime tale of two strange ducks who overcome the odds—pun completely intended—and become friends.
Theodora is an odd duck indeed: She spends her days swimming with a teacup balanced on her head, flavoring her duck pellets with mango salsa and watching the stars. She is content, her days are full—but they’re not quite fulfilling. One fateful day, a new duck named Chad moves next door. He’s strange, unstructured, disorderly and loud—the opposite of quietly meticulous Theodora. Despite his eccentricities—and her initial judgment of him—the pair bond over a shared love of the stars. During an outing, another duck loudly points out that “odd duck” as the pair waddle past. Each thinks that the other must be the odd one, resulting in an argument. As Theodora ponders their fight, she realizes that though she’s happy with her life, it doesn’t mean much without someone to share it with. A moral that could have been nauseatingly saccharine in the hands of a lesser author is handled deftly here. Castellucci and Varon shine together, with Varon’s trademark animal characters and Castellucci’s careful prose. Readers expecting a typical graphic novel may be a bit put off; reading like a long picture book, this is reliant on illustrations that stretch across an entire page as opposed to many boxy, structured panels, resulting in a wonderfully odd and endearing little offering.
This clever celebration of individuality delights. (Graphic fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59643-557-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: First Second/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note.
Little Honey Bunny Funnybunny loves baseball almost as much as she loves her big brother P.J.—though it’s a close-run thing.
Readers familiar with the pranks P.J. plays on his younger sibling in older episodes of the series (most illustrated by Roger Bollen) will be amused—and perhaps a little confused—to see him in the role of perfect big brother after meeting his swaddled little sister for the first time in mama’s lap. But here, along with being a constant companion and “always happy to see her,” he cements his heroic status in her eyes by hitting a home run for his baseball team and then patiently teaching her how to play T-ball. After carefully coaching her and leading her through warm-up exercises, he even sits in the stands, loudly cheering her on as she scores the winning run in her own very first game. “‘You are the best brother a bunny could ever have!’” she burbles. This tale’s a tad blander compared with others centered on P.J. and his sister, but it’s undeniably cheery, with text well structured for burgeoning readers. The all-smiles animal cast in Bowers’ cartoon art features a large and diversely hued family of bunnies sporting immense floppy ears as well as a multispecies crowd of furry onlookers equally varied of color, with one spectator in a wheelchair.
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217032464
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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