Kirk (Miss Spider’s New Car, 1997, etc.) pens an incidental story—undeveloped, sentimental window-dressing—for brash metallic 3-D illustrations that may leave readers cold. Nova, a young and restless robot, enjoys making robotic animals inspired by his prized possession and ancient family heirloom, a wooden toy ark and its bestiary; he dreams of being with his father, Taspett, an intergalactic explorer in search of crystals to supply his planet’s energy. One day Nova hijacks a spaceship, only to crash it on a distant planet. There he builds a bestiary of his own from the broken parts of his ship, including a trumpeting beacon that attracts his father, who also crashes on the planet. Taspett expires, but Nova restores him with donated parts, including an elephant’s trunk, dog’s tail, and a crucial heart valve from Nova himself. They discover crystals critical to their planet’s survival, and return home heroes. It’s sentimental, long, and boring; readers will spend more time looking at the pictures than listening to the story, then they’ll simply move on. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-28208-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
A delicious triumph over fear of night creatures.
Pippa conquers a fear of the creatures that emerge from her storybooks at night.
Pippa’s “wonderfully wild imagination” can sometimes run “a little TOO wild.” During the day, she wears her “armor” and is a force to be reckoned with. But in bed at night, Pippa worries about “villains and monsters and beasts.” Sharp-toothed and -taloned shadows, dragons, and pirates emerge from her storybooks like genies from a bottle, just to scare her. Pippa flees to her parents’ room only to be brought back time and again. Finally, Pippa decides that she “needs a plan” to “get rid of them once and for all.” She decides to slip a written invitation into every book, and that night, they all come out. She tries subduing them with a lasso, an eye patch, and a sombrero, but she is defeated. Next, she tries “sashes and sequins and bows,” throwing the fashion pieces on the monsters, who…“begin to pose and primp and preen.” After that success, their fashion show becomes a nightly ritual. Clever Pippa’s transformation from scared victim of her own imagination to leader of the monster pack feels fairly sudden, but it’s satisfying nonetheless. The cartoony illustrations effectively use dynamic strokes, shadow, and light to capture action on the page and the feeling of Pippa's fears taking over her real space. Pippa and her parents are brown-skinned with curls of various textures.
A delicious triumph over fear of night creatures. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9300-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
This pleasant look at gardening in a city setting reflects a growing trend.
Several inner-city children work together to plant seeds and cultivate their own gardens, transforming their little “anywhere farms” into a lush, green community garden covering a vacant city lot.
A pink-cheeked little girl in overalls receives a single seed from a helpful tan-skinned neighbor on the title page, and she then inspires a flurry of gardening in her neighborhood with children and adults of different ethnicities joining in, including a white boy who uses a wheelchair. The bouncy, rhyming text conveys the basic requirements of growing plants from seeds as well as suggesting a wide variety of unusual containers for growing plants. Several leading questions about the plant growth cycle are interspersed within the story, set in large type on full pages that show a seed gradually sprouting and growing into a huge sunflower on the final, wordless page. The joyful text makes growing flowers and vegetables seem easy, showing plants spilling out of alternative containers as well as more traditional raised beds and the concluding, large garden plot. The text focuses on the titular concept of an “anywhere farm,” without differentiating between farms and gardens, but this conceit is part of the amusing, rollicking tone. Detailed, soft-focus illustrations in mixed media use an autumnal palette of muted green, peach, and tan that don’t quite match the buoyant flavor of the cheerful text.
This pleasant look at gardening in a city setting reflects a growing trend. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7499-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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