A sentimental Stone Age saga.
A prehistoric girl saves the day with courage and kindness.
Stone, who appears to live during the Stone Age, lives in a small mountain village amid bison, elk, and mastodons. She and her father are close, and when he becomes ill, she knows she is the only “willing warrior” to take the arduous journey to secure the cure for him, which is guarded by vicious bears. Since her father taught her to be fierce and strong, she knows she can do it. When she encounters a huge, horned beast, she scares it with a brave, loud cry but then decides to comfort and befriend it. The two journey to where the cure lies, and when Stone responds with kindness to the ferocious bears, they become friends: “Kindness made Stone…as strong as stone.” The book possesses the emotional formula of a typical animated Disney film with its focus on the father-daughter relationship; its dramatic tableaux with modulations in light that support the book’s emotional undercurrents (Stone picks the healing flower by a setting sun with her new bear BFF by her side); earnest characters and emotionally anthropomorphized creatures (the girl and the beast laugh and play together, and a bear altogether dismisses the idea of the food chain when Stone hugs it); and its emphasis on a moral takeaway. A happy father-daughter reunion wraps up the tale. All human characters have light-brown skin and straight, darker brown hair. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75.6% of actual size.)
A sentimental Stone Age saga. (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20466-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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