Cooper (Ballpark, 1998, etc.) once again takes a familiar sight and infuses it with a squiggly magic as he ebulliently illustrates how a vacant lot is transformed by construction. The architect comes with her blueprints to a lot full of trash and weeds. A backhoe follows, and big trucks delivering materials and digging out stuff. Then the workers come, with mortar that looks like “a big tub of oatmeal” and concrete that “smells like chalk.” They fetch and carry and measure things off, and they eat fried chicken and call home. Cooper piles on numerous small images of workers hammering and hauling toilets and wedging insulation, often opposite a full-page image of the building as it slowly takes form and shape, filling the vacant lot. The lines of text come at right angles and bend around machinery as Cooper tells about a worker “with hands and arms so big they could juggle trucks” and another “with two braids” who repeats a joke to her co-worker, who repeats it to the worker above him. The pictures are fascinating and informative; readers will come away with a real understanding of how a building comes into existence. (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16494-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-688-13166-2 King Midas And The Golden Touch ($16.00; PLB $15.63; Apr.; 32 pp.; 0-688-13165-4; PLB 0-688-13166-2): The familiar tale of King Midas gets the golden touch in the hands of Craft and Craft (Cupid and Psyche, 1996). The author takes her inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling, capturing the essence of the tale with the use of pithy dialogue and colorful description. Enchanting in their own right, the illustrations summon the Middle Ages as a setting, and incorporate colors so lavish that when they are lost to the uniform gold spurred by King Midas’s touch, the point of the story is further burnished. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-13165-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
The way-off-road vehicle (The Magic School Bus and the Electric Field, 1997, etc.) tours the ears, eyes, nose, and skin when the assistant principal, Mr. Wilde, accidentally shrinks the school bus and the children on board, commandeering it to deliver a message to Ms. Frizzle. The vehicle plunges into the eye of a police officer, where the students explore the pupil, the cornea, the retina, and the optic nerve leading to the brain. Then it’s on to other senses, via the ear of a small child, the nose of a dog, and the tongue of the Friz herself. Sidebars and captions add to the blizzard of information here; with a combination of plot, details, and jokes, the trip is anything but dull. The facts will certainly entice readers to learn more about the ways living creatures perceive the world. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-44697-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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