The delightfully determined small person introduced in Sophie's Snail (1989) celebrates her fifth birthday on Christmas Day; honoring her plan to become a "lady farmer," her parents and twin brothers give her a splendid toy farm, but her live pets are still limited to the wood lice, slugs, earthworms, and so on she keeps in the potting shed. To these she hopes to add a stray cat she's feeding; Dad doesn't like cats, but—with the connivance of great-great-aunt Al, who suggests importing a mouse into the kitchen—Sophie gets her way. Meanwhile, she's started school, where she negotiates in her own inimitable way with classmate Duncan ("not only a malleable little boy but very greedy") and old enemy Dawn. A predictable conclusion—Dad is entirely won over, and "Tom" has kittens—but King-Smith's narration in this sequel is wonderfully crisp and unsentimental, while bright, quietly persistent Sophie (like Lowry's Sam) has rare charm. The language has suffered more Americanization than Sophie's Snail, detracting from the pleasant British flavor; on the other hand, Parkins's amusing cross-hatched drawings, nicely blending humor and deft characterizations, are superior. (Fiction. 5-10)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1564023737
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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