An uneven tale of a boy saving his city’s zoo.
Young Stu and his mother both love the neighboring zoo. At night, it radiates a great animal music, sometimes soft and sometimes upbeat, but Stu is happy to conduct either like a symphony. Then the action shifts. A fat-cat developer—all skeezy-sleazy, with a nasty comb-over—wants the zoo’s land for a mall and easily buys the city council by padding their pockets. The animals get wind of their fate and take stock. This is the most droll part of the book, with the polar bear “coming apart at the seams.” “Pull yourself together,” instructs the rhino, while the tiger admonishes the slothful sloth to “get your head out of the clouds!” Here readers begin to appreciate that there has been an overarching other-interest all along: that artful expression, the idiom. Then they will start hunting for them: weak at the knees, wear your heart on your sleeve, mad as a wet hen, selling like hotcakes, all ears and wee hours. Which is a good thing, for the story itself is rather artless. Stu conducts the animals in a public forum, and they are a hit. The developer becomes the pooper-scooper at the zoo. One steady hand throughout is Bowers’ artwork—light but lush and charged with character and emotion. As a hunt-and-peck for idioms, this can be fun and even educational; as a story, this can be forgotten. (Picture book. 6-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58536-802-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; here's one story that would be better with no words at all.
Burks manages to turn The Odd Couple into an adventure story.
The Odd Couple is one of the most important stories in the history of Western culture. Oscar and Felix were archetypes when they were called Bert and Ernie and when they were called the Grasshopper and the Ant. In that tradition, Squirrel is a fussbudget who’s afraid of beetles, spiders, running out of acorns and forgetting his toothbrush. Bird isn’t afraid of anything and can usually be found flying upside down. The story only works if the characters get on each other’s nerves. The problem here is that it works much too well. Bird is more annoying than Bert and Felix put together. Bird never stops talking, even when being chased by an enormous cat. That’s the moment when Bird says, “Is it true that dogs are smarter than cats?” Some readers may decide to ignore the dialogue and just look at the pictures, which are so cinematic that you can almost see the cat’s whiskers twitching. The character design is astounding. Squirrel’s head is shaped like a little acorn (complete with cap), and even the trees look like fractal patterns, spiraling off the page.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; here's one story that would be better with no words at all. (Graphic adventure. 6-10)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-31283-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Gizmo is more droll than likable, but Wedgie is attractively steadfast and amiable, in the end rescuing both Gizmo and the...
When families get blended, so do their animals. Gizmo, a genius guinea pig who can read and wears eyeglasses, and Wedgie, a much less intelligent corgi who wears a superhero cape, each alternately relate their interwoven stories in distinct first-pet voices.
Unfortunately for the guinea pig, his owner, Elliot, is forced to let his new, annoying little sister, Jasmine, help take care of Gizmo. Jasmine enjoys dressing him up in tutus and housing him in Barbie’s lavish (pink) former abode. But Gizmo is an intrepid sort of critter with evil plans to rule the world, and he does find Barbie’s rucksack useful for carrying gear as he engages in some nighttime adventures, not all of them successful. Through comments Elliot makes, readers learn of his unhappiness with his new family situation, although this second storyline takes a back seat to Gizmo’s scheming. Acting as his and Elliot’s foil, Wedgie, who calls Gizmo “the Furry Potato,” is convincingly doglike in his eager embrace of just about everything. Fisinger’s numerous illustrations are action-packed and appropriately humorous, especially in their depiction of Wedgie’s never-ending enthusiasm. An opening gallery introduces Jasmine’s family as Latino and Elliot and his father as black. While the tale is never laugh-out-loud funny, it’s amusing and imaginative enough to sustain interest for readers new to chapter books.
Gizmo is more droll than likable, but Wedgie is attractively steadfast and amiable, in the end rescuing both Gizmo and the story. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-244763-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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