Using cut-paper figures in, or at least reminiscent of, traditional styles, Nash lights briefly on Chinese history, folklore, culture, and geography. Seeking an answer to a dragon’s riddle—“What was made in China almost 2000 years ago and is still in use today?”—a paper butterfly perches on a pagoda, poses the question to a carp, listens to tales of the Monkey King, flutters past the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the “chocolate soldiers” of Xi-an, then at last learns the solution (paper) from another paper butterfly. Intercut with explanatory comments and closing with a map, plus skimpy directions for prospective paper-cutters, this tries to cover far too many topics, doing justice to none. For a (somewhat) less superficial answer to the dragon’s riddle, with similar glimpses into Chinese life, stick with Ying Chang Compestine’s Story of Paper (2003), or conventional nonfiction. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-84507-043-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
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