It looks bland at first, but it’s a clever perspective changer for NT children as well as a rare chance for young readers...
A young narrator explains that his neurotypical friend is OK, even though he sometimes plays games out of order and doesn’t flap his hands to express emotions.
It’s a neat bit of role reversal. It’s really OK that Johnny arrives for playdates a few minutes late or early (“hopeless when it comes to punctuality”), that his gaze is direct, that he really doesn’t seem interested in knowing everything about hydraulic forklifts, wants to play with other kids (“Maybe he’s a little too obsessed with social interaction”), and never has a meltdown when there’s a fire drill at school. “Mom says that everyone’s brain is different, and different isn’t always wrong.” A closing note for parents offers further bids for acceptance: “as many as 67 in 68 children may be neurotypical. So if your child does not currently have an NT kid in their life, they almost certainly will.” Merry’s stripped-down, neatly drawn generic views of dewy-eyed figures with fixed, tight-lipped smiles neither give the characters any individuality nor do the premise’s ingenuity much service, though they are doubtless calculated to make it easy for the book’s autistic readers to decode.
It looks bland at first, but it’s a clever perspective changer for NT children as well as a rare chance for young readers with autism to see themselves as a point-of-view character. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84905-721-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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