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LETTER LUNCH

Name: LETTER LUNCH
Author: Eliza Gutiérrez
ISBN: 978-1-77147-000-1

by Eliza Gutiérrez ; illustrated by Eliza Gutiérrez ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2014

This recipe spells out delicious wordplay and appreciation.

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Hold onto your vowels and get ready for an alphabetic romp—graphic style.

In this wordless pursuit, a hungry boy and girl check the cupboard for food but find only a letter “C.” So they take a basket outside to gather consonants from bushes and trees to make lunch. Then they’re off to the market to add more to their basket. Missing a “Z,” they climb up a hill, where a twisted black bush holds the letter. They return home and scramble up a dish in the kitchen, but it tastes bad, until they realize that DLCS needs VOWELS to become delicious. Cut-paper collage and mixed media carry out this visual venture with basic shapes and dots and lines for eyes and mouths. Some background scenes and people are drawn with just white outlines, and each letter is blocked in different colors. Sharp eyes will notice a clue to the story in the list of letter ingredients the boy and girl make as they leave the kitchen: It contains no vowels. Other graphic alphabets exist (Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet, 2011, is a good recent one), but Gutiérrez’s comic-strip story feels pleasingly fresh. Obviously, this wordless, multipaneled narrative is not for beginners learning the alphabet, but it is an inventive boon for language teachers and others.

This recipe spells out delicious wordplay and appreciation. (Alphabet picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: March 15, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-77147-000-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Owlkids Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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MUD PUDDLE

by Robert Munsch & illustrated by Dušan Petričić ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2012

Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...

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The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.

Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.

Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Annick Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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GOOD FAMILIES DON'T
by Robert Munsch ; illustrated by Joy Ang

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LOVE YOU FOREVER POP-UP EDITION
by Robert Munsch ; illustrated by Sheila McGraw

- BOOK REVIEW
FROM FAR AWAY
by Robert Munsch & Saoussan Askar ; illustrated by Rebecca Green

- IN THE NEWS
Robert Munsch Requested Physician-Assisted Death

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RALPH TELLS A STORY

by Abby Hanlon & illustrated by Abby Hanlon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2012

An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...

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With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.

Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.

An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)