Gus and Grandpa (Gus and Grandpa Ride the Train, 1998, etc.) return, this time to tackle that classic coming-of-age moment: when the training wheels come off. Gus is a happy cyclist until Ryan, new in the neighborhood and about Gus’s age, rides by on his racing bike and asks Gus why he still uses training wheels. Gus loves his training wheels, which stabilize an otherwise “tippy, slippy, floppy, falling-over bike.” Gus’s father asks if Gus wants to remove his training wheels; Gus says no. In a rather interfering manner, his father buys him a new bike that proves to be Gus’s nemesis. He keeps crashing, and has the banged-up knees to prove it. Grandpa has an idea. He rolls out Gus’s father’s old bike, a sort of intermediate model between training-wheels and Gus’s new bike. Then Grandpa holds on to the back of the seat as Gus rides around a parking lot a “million” times and starts to feel the wind in his sails. Sweet and mellow: Mills (and Stock, of course) hits the right degree of fear without having to revert to terror to delineate the importance of Gus’s act, and Grandpa is no saint, just a gentleman who understands the notion of patience’something his son is still working on. (Fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 5, 1999
ISBN: 0-374-32821-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Calamity, a camel with a peevish attitude about her life in a caravan, trades in her heavy packs for a colder climate and skis and soon yearns for her former life. It becomes quite clear that camels were not designed for snowy slopes. When perfection isn’t achieved in Calamity’s new habitat, the old woes inherent in carrying burdens through the desert seem far less tiresome the second time around. It’s a particularly easy lesson, learned without fuss or tension, depicted in Busby’s cartoonish illustrations. Readers will enjoy one go-around, but this story from Simon (see review, above) is probably too one-note and simplistic for repeat readings. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-899607-59-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Following the success of Taro Gomi’s Everyone Poops (1993, not reviewed), this is a similarly direct picture book from Japan, and more crudely done. Laughing at two children who think he’s wearing a bra, a hefty man explains that it’s only a belt over a tank top, then launches into a brief, patchy question-and-answer that covers the physical development of breasts (in women), nursing—“When a baby grabs hold of the breast and sucks on the nipple (glug glug glug), milk flows from it”—and why most people don’t remember much of their babyhood. The two-color illustrations depict a series of mostly bare-chested men, women, and children, drawn with thick black lines and filled with a garish orange. Enlighten curious children by sharing relevant passages from such guides as Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal (1994) instead. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-916291-88-X
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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