The overall lack of action or a plotline hints that this may be intended more as a fill-in-the-blanks gag than a series of...
A seemingly bland comparison of cute cartoon kittens and equally cuddly monsters offers customizing features that allow aspiring writers all the narrative freedom they might desire.
“Monsters are big. Kittens are small.” To these and similarly innocuous lines, Jones matches scenes of rotund brutes and little felines posing together, with minor animations and tap-activated, low-volume growls and mewing added. Despite all the differences, the two also turn out to have plenty in common, from “They are both warm and cuddly,” to “They don’t care what their friends look like.” The redoubtable Lee himself adds star power with an emotive "Read To Me" narration. Some discreet farting paired to “Monsters smell weird” is about as far as the envelope gets pushed—at least on the first run-through. Start over or tap the “create” icon, however, and the text on each screen vanishes for a keyboard that allows children to type in, or to voice with the microphone option activated, a (savable) text—any text—of their own. Budding artists aren’t forgotten but have fewer options; floating pencils turn out to be just icons to open ribbon menus that allow some switching of selected figures’ colors or shapes, but there’s no free drawing.
The overall lack of action or a plotline hints that this may be intended more as a fill-in-the-blanks gag than a series of opportunities for story crafting, but there’s still a lot of scope for invention. (iPad storybook app. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Storypanda
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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