Weary of never seeing his working mother after school, a lad imagines building a robotic parent who would make all his favorite foods, do his homework, never tell him to brush and would take care of the odd bully or obnoxious neighbor to boot. In Cantone’s scribbly, amusing illustrations, both child and barrel-shaped metal mother sport big fixed grins as they scoot through a set of skewed-perspective settings, leaving trails of bric-a-brac and startled passersby. “Mom” resembles an oversized canister vacuum cleaner with flexible pipe for limbs and, oddly, coffee cups for breasts. It all sounds pretty ideal—but in the end, realizing that robots aren’t soft or nice smelling, and can’t supply cuddles, the young inventor goes for a robot dog instead. Good choice, kid. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-88776-873-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like Adoff’s newly recast Black Is Brown Is Tan (p. 404), this pairs a text published decades ago (1957) with new art from the original illustrator. In a series of trades, a rotund little man in a gingham suit swaps his knife for a wife, her cake for a rake, and so on, generally getting the better of each transaction, until at last he presents his wife with a whale. Being a commonsensical sort, she trades in the whale—for a knife. The verses are gathered at the end, with music adapted from a folk tune. Haas doesn’t stray far from her original compositions; her figures are redrawn and freshly colored, but they still dance in sequential vignettes across oblong white spreads as in the first edition. Young readers who find Old Mother Hubbard hilarious will giggle over this similar-sounding nonsense rhyme. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-029359-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
In this bellyaching monologue, a child presents a litany of offenses to justify his birthday wish that prankish older brother Gordon turn into a bug overnight. Though the narrator’s no paragon of virtue himself, Gordon does come off as the big brother from hell—jolting his younger sib awake in the morning, playing on his fear of spiders with a multilegged gift, “accidentally” dropping his toothbrush into the toilet—and so forth. Davis (Marsupial Sue, 2001, etc.) crowds the foregrounds with pop-eyed, large-featured cartoon caricatures, and even though a good deed does put Gordon in a slightly better light at the end, there are hints at the close that here’s one birthday wish about to come true. Though this describes a less nuanced relationship than Polacco’s My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother (1994) or Kellogg’s Much Bigger Than Martin (1976), it may persuade feuding sibs to lighten up, at least temporarily. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-46659-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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