Stronger than the Incredible Hulk, more agile than Spiderman, purpler than Barney, here’s Sumo Mouse, mysterious, masked protector of Japanese mousedom and thunder-thighed bane of feline malefactors everywhere. Having obviously steeped himself in sumo and martial-arts movie lore, the late master of cut-paper and Caldecott winner (Golem, 1996), Wisniewski sends his first-class foe-squasher hurtling from Tokyo’s rooftops to free hundreds of mice—all rendered as distinct individuals in characteristically flamboyant razor-cut paper collages—slated for insertion into squeaky toys manufactured by the unscrupulous Tiger Tanaka. Who is this globular do-gooder? Believing that he could only be grand champion wrestler Gachinko, Tanaka dispatches a gigantic robot to turn the renowned rikishi into sushi. But as the corpulent caped one is actually Gachinko’s friend Yama, a diminutive barber with the soul of a sumo and a very special suit in his basement, the stage is set for a nick-of-time rescue—and a shattering, spread-filling tsuma-dori smackdown. Three cheers for the mightiest mouse since, well, Mighty Mouse, who now looks so last-millennium. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8118-3492-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
Commissioned to flesh out a storyline and create a spoken text for a New York City Ballet production set to the Saint-Saëns piece, Lithgow offers a tale of a wayward schoolboy who escapes his teacher during a museum visit, falls asleep surrounded by stuffed exhibits in a closed gallery, and dreams of his classmates, neighbors, music teacher, librarian, mother, and great-aunt as animals. The author once again shows his knack for brisk doggerel—“Oliver Pendleton Percy the Third / Was a mischievous imp of a lad. / The tricks that he played on Professor McByrd / Nearly drove the old schoolmaster mad.” Kulikov catches the rollicking comic tone with floridly dressed, theatrically posed figures bearing animal-like heads on humanoid bodies, or vice versa, performing for an amused-looking lad in a rumpled school blazer. An attendant CD features actor Lithgow’s animated reading, interspersed with musical passages from the production. Though not quite another “Peter and the Wolf,” this will give a much-performed orchestral piece a leg up with younger listeners—and it works at least as well on paper as it does on stage. (Picture book with CD. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-86721-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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