A bit awkward to follow considering its length and orientation but truly a grand tour
An extraplanetary visitor’s city visit literally unfolds in this unusually formatted panorama.
Presented on a 12-foot-long vertical strip that has been rolled up and pressed flat, the itinerary moves down from high towers at the beginning though zigzag streets and winding canals and eventually into deep subterranean reaches. Each successive flip adds both a block of descriptive narrative and new streets and sights for the intergalactic tourist and for kneeling viewers (a hallway or large room will be required to see this in its entirety) to discover simultaneously. Along with lots of amusing details and side activity, there’s also a seek-and-find element, as the green extraterrestrial, recurring in each segment, is just one tiny figure among many. So warm are the welcoming rounds of parades and other festivities from the city’s residents—all of whom are notably diverse in skin color and dress—that the ET asks to stay on. Drama and romance ensue as the new immigrant is temporarily “overpowered by a praline” but then meets and marries a mermaid. So off the two honeymooners course, past a smiling monster at the city’s lowest point and beyond the bottom corner. Dieudonné’s scenes are festooned with tiny, active figures (including interracial and possibly same-sex couples as well as some instances of ethnic stereotypes). Still, they don’t look overcrowded, and despite flattened, sometimes skewed perspectives, the seamless transitions add to her composition’s overall visual unity.
A bit awkward to follow considering its length and orientation but truly a grand tour . (Novelty. 6-9)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-500-65069-1
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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