Stevens puts a time-honored message in a buoyant new setting: Tony's father is a hotel chef who expects Tony to become a chef, too; he has no sympathy with his son's greatest interest- -dancing—which he's done constantly since before he could walk. On the school bus, in the bathtub, and, most disruptively, when his father assigns him kitchen duties, Tony dances, juggling lemons, flinging carrots, tap-dancing through a mountain of potatoes—all deliciously depicted in Yalowitz's mock-solemn art. Then the hotel has an emergency shortage of one dancer for a gala banquet; while Dad cooks a delicious feast, Tony saves the show (in a parody of a school production with kids dressed as veggies) and wins his praise. Spinelli's narrative is lively with dialogue and comical slapstick details, entertainingly depicted in Yalowitz's signature style: nearly flat modeling; expressions evoked with the tiniest of features; people and objects, in arrested motion, across carefully designed spreads in lighthearted colors. Good fun. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: April 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-786350-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Four Winds/MacMillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit.
The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.
Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ginny loves reading circle, but getting there is a bit of a challenge because only half the chairs are real. Figuring out which words to read is tough, too. See, “Ginny’s eyes [play] tricks”—she’s got double vision and doesn’t realize that’s unusual. “We read it just once,” says her teacher, and, “Don’t squint.” Lyon’s simple, declarative text effortlessly puts readers into Ginny’s head, and Avril’s whimsical mixed-media illustrations give them her eyes, overlaying one image slightly off its original in a satisfyingly disorienting fashion. A vision test at school is revelatory: “Do you know,” the nurse asks gently, “that most people see only one?” This small episode, taken from the author’s own experience, is much more than bibliotherapy, even though it covers Ginny’s remedial eye patch (hence the title). In single or double vision, Ginny simply glows. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-5024-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Richard Jackson/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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