Stagestruck Annie sees an opportunity for breaking into show biz almost everywhere she looks—even in the dairy section of the supermarket that her third-grade class visits on a field trip- -which is why she ends up dropping yogurt on the floor. Still, from her point of view, slapping her tormentor, Matthew, with a dead fish is an involuntary act. But her teacher, who doesn't see it that way, abruptly ends the class trip and gives Annie a good talking-to on the way back. Since she's in disgrace, Annie gets the part no one wants in the class play on nutrition—an artichoke. In the event, she's a pretty good one, and also levelheaded enough to save the show when Matthew forgets his lines. Then, true to form, she topples into her classmates, causing an avalanche of ``foods.'' Annie's narration has an engagingly light, deadpan humor. Good fun. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-75910-8
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
Stunning color photographs from a renowned team graphically illustrate the pages, but do not overwhelm the text. The effect...
Donna Jackson (The Bone Detectives, 1996) creates a riveting and thorough account of dedicated people banding together with the help of science and the law to catch an elk poacher. It begins the day before the elk, Charger, is shot in Yellowstone Park and takes the reader through almost two years of detective work more riveting then any television police drama. Jackson focuses on the almost miraculous feats of scientists in the only animal forensic lab in the world as they piece together clues, examining, for example, DNA samples and bullet casings. Those readers clamoring for justice will find satisfaction in the apprehension of the poacher who is punished with jail time and fines. Jackson does not skip lightly around the subject, so the story is often painful and jarring. The treatment is appropriate for children over ten, effectively eliciting an emotional reaction that is educational as well as motivational. Interspersed throughout the story are pages filled with facts about the law, science, poaching, and endangered species.
Stunning color photographs from a renowned team graphically illustrate the pages, but do not overwhelm the text. The effect is that of a scrapbook of information with photos that enrich a real-life animal detective story. (ways to help, list of forensic terms) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-395-86976-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Lattimore (Cinderhazel, 1997, etc) presents the Medusa legend as an elaborate curse orchestrated start to finish by a savagely jealous goddess. Though her mother is “one part poisonous eel, one part giant water snake, and a third part woman,” Medusa is so beautiful that Poseidon himself is entranced. When Medusa gloats privately that she is more beautiful than Athena, the wrathful goddess rises up, changes her into a snake-haired gorgon, and then pushes young Perseus into hunting her down and beheading her. The penalty's extremity makes Medusa something of a tragic figure, and she looks in Lattimore's swirling, patterned paintings more magnificent than hideous—even beautiful in a scaly, pointy-toothed way. Though the tale is fleshed out with the first part of the story of Perseus, the “hero” comes off as barely more than an instrument of divine will here; expand standard versions of the myth, such as Warwick Hutton's Perseus (1993), with this female-centered take. (Picture book/folk tale. 8-10)
Pub Date: May 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-027904-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
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