An imaginative story about an overalls-clad panda who leaves his apple orchard for the city during a drought. Sam doesn't know about the malfunctioning of the rain machine, a curious contraption presided over by Thunder Dragon and his pal Lightning; or that Dragon, on Earth in hopes of setting things right, got trapped in Sam's jacket while Sam was mending it. When Sam notices his needle and pulls it out, Dragon escapes to become a popular success in the city; and when Lightning, a gentle cloudlike figure who has been lurking in the borders, finally shows up with the machine, Sam (now working as a fix-it panda) repairs it by removing ``an eternity of gunk.'' The didacticism of this environmental fable is muted by the freewheeling extravagance with which Conover adopts images from a variety of cultures, especially Chinese (dragon, panda, the hills around Sam's orchard) and American (rural architecture and a city much like New York). The tale is briskly told in a humorously colloquial style, but best are the precise illustrations, uniting the fantastical blend in a curiously appealing world peopled with beguiling animals in a myriad of human activities. The balance between bright-colored close-ups of the action on each spread and the broad, gray-brown scenes on which they are superimposed is especially effective; in the last spread, the two become one, while the tender green surrounding Sam and his new family is a reminder of life's fragility. An ambitious book—a little contrived, but with a lot to enjoy and discover. Endpaper game. (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-36393-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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