An imaginative, quirky tale about perseverance and the importance of patience.
A young inventor’s negative words manifest as monsters in this picture book.
Sammy, who has brown skin and purple hair, loves crafting gizmos but gets frustrated when the outcome isn’t successful. After she gets zapped turning on her latest device, Sammy utters discouraging words, which create a “Thought Monster,” a scowling creature who generates chaos in her workshop. When Sammy’s invention malfunctions, sparking earthquakelike shaking, she voices self-deprecating statements—including “I’m not smart enough!”—causing more monsters to emerge. Sammy mulls quitting but finds inspiration when she reads a note of encouragement she had written to herself on the gadget’s blueprint. After she acknowledges that pessimism prevents her from “becoming an amazing inventor” and that mistakes are an inevitable part of the process, the monsters disappear. Soon, Sammy’s diligence and dedication pay off; the gizmo (a piece to a rocketlike contraption) works perfectly. Spotlighting a spirited, young protagonist, Pedersen’s tale deftly encourages youngsters to persist in their creative pursuits even when things get tough. The personification of negative talk as a troublemaking monster is clever and kid-friendly. Sammy’s experience emphasizes how treating yourself with kindness and compassion aids in success. Neipp’s bold, full-color cartoon illustrations offer vibrant scenes of the treehouse workshop filled with gadgets and amusing details like Sammy’s teddy-bear sidekick. Dialogue and active words like BOOMand PLOPare enlarged and integrated into the scenes. Shapes, lines, and squiggles indicate movement, emotions, and sounds.
An imaginative, quirky tale about perseverance and the importance of patience.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9852460-0-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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