Sequels are planned, so Danny’s newly won fans will have something to look forward to.
Being the new kid is never easy...sometimes, neither is being the new kid’s new best friend.
Fourth-grader Danny Cohen likes Calvin Waffle, the new kid at school, well enough, but Calvin is a little odd. After just two weeks of friendship, Calvin starts using Danny as the subject of an experiment—and he won’t tell Danny what the weeklong study is. It involves statistics, observing Danny from afar and pockets full of jelly beans. Meanwhile, Danny tries to figure out if Calvin’s absent father really is a spy or if that’s just a story Calvin tells. Danny’s also trying to help Calvin make new friends...and both of them are trying to not run afoul of Mrs. Cakel, their tough teacher, who’s armed with a huge list of “NO”s. Award-winning nonfiction author and creator of Cam Jansen, Adler starts a new series of gently humorous stories aimed at those just starting chapter books. The first-person narration, realistic characters and occasional line-drawing “doodles” will keep pages turning. Young readers will easily see themselves in Danny and his compatriots.
Sequels are planned, so Danny’s newly won fans will have something to look forward to. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8721-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
Vague text and anemic pictures make this at best a half-hearted tribute to the construction workers of the last century or so. In her brief, poetic text Johnson writes of “those shadowy building men . . . moving the earth to connect water,” of “railroad workers . . . who were there to connect all.” She continues: “As buildings tower above us / they tell the tales / of the cities . . . They whisper down past it all and say, / ‘They built us, your fathers . . .’ ” There is little here to engage child readers, either intellectually or emotionally, and Moser’s remote, indistinct portraits of ordinary-looking men (only men) dressed in sturdy working clothes and, mostly, at rest, only intermittently capture any sense of individual or collective effort. In evident recognition of these inadequacies, a prose afterword has been added to explain what the book is about—a superfluous feature had Moser and Johnson produced work up to their usual standards. Let readers spend time more profitably with the likes of John Henry or Mike Mulligan. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-66521-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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