A look at the often-cruel realm of fourth grade. Nate and his new friend, Donald, are happy they will be in the same class, but unhappy to find that so is Louisa, a girl who lives to ridicule others. On the very first day, she dubs Donald “King of the Kooties,” and takes every opportunity to taunt and humiliate him. Shy, quiet Donald has no idea how to respond, so Nate devises a plan to get Louisa off their backs. Nate’s solution, to embrace the Kooties title and to publicly include Louisa in it, is clever, but many readers will find it implausible, given Louisa’s well-established spite, aggression, and determination. As a story that takes a look at one approach to the age-old problem of bullies, it works well, straining credibility but never becoming didactic. (b&w illustrations) (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8027-8709-6
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
That Bynum comes up with so many lines to rhyme with “Altoona Baboona” deserves some kind of acclaim, even if the rhymes make readers laugh and groan at the same time. Altoona Baboona is an ape that “gets bored on her dune-a,” hops a “hot air balloon-a” and goes south to “Calcun-a.” On her hot air travels Altoona meets up with a loon-a and a racoon-a, who come back to the dune-a for an evening bonfire and roasted marshmallows. Bynum’s watercolors have a breezy ocean air feel to them, as light and buoyant as her simian heroine. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201860-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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