Deft hommage, but hilarious even outside that context.
A droll seaside idyll, paying tribute as much to film comedies of the silent era as to the 1953 movie that inspired it.
In wordless, monochrome, mostly full-page illustrations, Merveille considerably reworks and abbreviates the plot of Les Vacances de M. Hulot but preserves both the pipe-smoking title character’s amiable imperturbability and the original’s nonstop succession of sandy distractions, minor disasters, and comical set pieces. A positive magnet for mishaps, hardly does Hulot stroll onto the beach before he’s doing classic battle with a folding lounge chair. There follows business with beach balls and children, a sea gull who steals his shoe, some funny improv with a seashell after he drops his pipe in the water, and other incidents. Finally, he falls asleep on the aforementioned chair and floats out to sea—fetching up in an English hamlet where he is last seen offering his by-now-tattered newspaper (its palest yellow the only spot of color in the art) to an astonished resident. Practically every picture is either a punch line or an obvious setup for one, but even young audiences unexposed as yet to the Chaplins and Keatons of yore will have no trouble either connecting the dots or appreciating the visual jokery.
Deft hommage, but hilarious even outside that context. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4254-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Vivid glimpses of what waits for anyone who is willing to stop just looking and go.
A stirring invitation to leap, dive, soar, plunge and thrill to the natural world’s wonders and glories.
“Right outside your window there’s a world to explore,” writes Kerley. “Ready?” In huge, bright, sharply focused photos, a hang glider and a mountain climber dangle in midair, a paleontologist carefully brushes dirt off a fossil, an astronaut dangles near the International Space Station, and spelunkers clamber amid spectacular crystals. These dramatic images mingle with equally eye-filling scenes of muddy, soaked, laughing young children—some venturing alone down a forest path or over jumbles of rock, others peering into a snow cave or a starry sky. “Size things up,” suggests the author. “Get a firm grip. Then… / …start climbing.” This may well leave safety-obsessed parents with the vapors, but that may be all to the good. Explanatory captions for several of the photographs, from very brief profiles of the explorers to the stories behind the photos themselves, appear at the end.
Vivid glimpses of what waits for anyone who is willing to stop just looking and go. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4263-1114-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
A one-trick pony—and the visual trick is much better presented in Rufus Butler Seder’s actual Scanimation series.
A low-rent Scanimation-knockoff import features a small sheet of finely barred plastic that creates moiré patterns and streams of movement when slid across a set of large, garish abstracts.
Aside from a mention of Central Park in the text and a “Broadway” street sign in one illustration, there is nothing here specific to the Big Apple. Instead, a carrot-nosed cartoon figure in striped pajamas floats over swirls of short, bar code–like lines. These are transformed, by sliding the plastic sheet very slowly across the page, into aerial views of dots, circles and spinning wheels moving through intersections or vaguely urban settings. Some scenes toward the end become fields of flashing lights intense enough to make the cautionary note on the back cover (“WARNING: CONTAINS FLASHING IMAGES”) a good idea. After delivering commentary that runs to inane lines like “The traffic speeds in a tangled race, / but all roads lead to much the same place,” the PJ-clad guide flies back to bed with a “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine! / Goodbye my friend, / Until next time.” A “next time” is unlikely for most readers.
A one-trick pony—and the visual trick is much better presented in Rufus Butler Seder’s actual Scanimation series. (Picture book/novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-907912-23-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Trafalgar Square
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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