Countering the raft of cautionary stories about the hazards of reckless wishing, this topsy-turvy tale suggests that sometimes the results are...delectable. Weary of her unvarying daily diet of cardboard for breakfast, string for lunch and sawdust for supper, young Nutmeg strolls down to a rubble-strewn shore one day. There she uncorks a huge blue genie who pressures her into wishing for something different for each meal, then presents her with a magic spoon. That night the hyperactive implement not only whips up a tasty feast for Nutmeg and her two doll-like housemates, it whips the entire house and its contents into a sailing ship, then whips the entire junky wasteland in which she lives into a calm, sunny sea with breakfast waiting on an enticing islet nearby. Readers’ imaginations will soar along with Nutmeg’s as bursts of color transform her dreary world with promises of adventures, culinary and otherwise, to come. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83519-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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In winter, an old man enters Cat’s Eye Hutong (alleyway or lane) with his bicycle, fitted with a rack filled with candied hawberry skewers, a Chinese treat.
He hopes to sell all so that he can buy medicine but first puts down a box of fish scraps in the snow. He calls for customers, but none appear. The charming, naïve watercolor-and–colored-pencil paintings begin to fill with feline images built into the architecture. Then a small child wearing a white medical mask (sometimes worn to prevent the spread of germs) buys a stick of hawberries, but as she walks off, the man notices a white tail peeking from her coat. Other young, masked buyers appear; all have tails, and one’s mask has slipped, exposing whiskers. Finally, a human girl buys the last stick, and when the old man asks her about the kids with tails, she informs him that only “Kitties have tails” but points up to cats on the rooftops all eating the red hawberry sticks. Careful readers will remember the fish left “as usual.” This book publishes simultaneously with an edition in Simplified Chinese, which features simplified characters and transliterated text in a small font directly above the characters. Backmatter includes a glossary keyed to intermediate-level readers, three-to-a-page thumbnails of the illustrations with English text, and note with cultural background (sadly missing in the English-only edition); further Chinese learning materials are available on the publisher’s website.
A heartwarming story with a bit of mystery, available in both English and Chinese. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Candied Plums
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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To choruses of electronic roars, shrieks, and gabbles, licensed aliens take on licensed beasts.
Along with brief introductions and fighting-skills rating charts, Hidalgo supplies perfunctory scenarios for matchups between a Wookiee and a Sarlacc, a Tusken raider and a tauntaun, and three other pairings—inviting readers to press on designated spots to activate snatches of sound and to pick winners for each dust-up. His descriptions (“These rolling meatballs of teeth and tentacles are considered one of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy,” he says of rathtars) are generally more colorful than Park’s recognizable but bland, flattened, cartoony figures. The tinny hoots and calls issuing from the rear cover’s tiny speaker are likewise generic, mostly interchangeable, and sound as if they were recorded in a cardboard box. The scenarios and the art are free of explicit gore or violence, but there’s a streak of cruelty in evidence, as the Ewoks are sent to saw off a wampa’s horn “for a mystical ceremony,” and the Geonosian’s task is to egg a reluctant rancor out into an arena to fight droids for the purpose of “impressing some visiting Hutts.”
The Force is definitely not with this one. (replaceable batteries, on/off switch) (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7603-6404-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: becker&mayer! kids
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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