A worthy topic but no more than a discussion starter, as it’s too bland to make much of an impression on its own.
An earnestly lifeless infodump featuring a child with a spectrum disorder who occasionally misbehaves but, mirabile dictu, can play piano like a pro.
Looking about 10 years old in some of Inouye’s static suburban scenes and younger in others, Anthony is viewed by a sympathetic would-be friend. She models proper responses while explaining that he sometimes screams at loud noises, throws sand, seldom makes eye contact, flaps his hands when he’s happy and just doesn’t get knock-knock jokes. But one day, a grand piano arrives at Anthony’s house, and the narrator is astonished to find him confidently playing “a song I never heard before. Wow! I can’t do that,” she marvels. Children will come away from this with a little more awareness of some common behaviors associated with diagnoses of Asperger’s and similar disabilities, but such information is already widely available in less generic trappings, and Anthony’s musical ability—which springs from nowhere here—isn’t exactly typical.
A worthy topic but no more than a discussion starter, as it’s too bland to make much of an impression on its own. (afterword, with URLs) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61608-961-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
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
BOOK REVIEW
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Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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