Part Hardy Boys, part archeology, this mesmerizing look at the discovery of the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux invites today’s readers to experience the wonder of the event. McCully has written and drawn a stunning fictionalized account based on historical records and interviews. The endpapers entice with the rendering of the maps of the caves, and soft, wide watercolor strokes capture the essence of the prehistoric art. When the action is aboveground, the realistic illustrations are her characteristic ink-and-watercolor style, but below the ground the edges soften and the images become shadowy and mysterious. The Caldecott winner gets the emotions of the secret descent for buried treasure just right, drawing readers' eyes down the tight shaft to the light of the first boy’s lantern in the large art-filled chamber. In one glorious wordless spread, the boys (and readers) are filled with awe at the revelation of the pristine art. What to do with this knowledge? The boys know just whom to trust. Budding historians will be amazed by this story of curiosity and serendipity. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-374-36694-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
In what seems like a veritable golden age of beginning readers, perhaps some things are better not published. Or read.
Captain Underpants he ain’t.
Although some may initially associate Harper and Shea’s beginning reader with Pilkey’s popular series, it falls short with a thin story and none of the master's clever sense of subversive, ribald humor. The titular hero starts as Veggiebaby, then becomes Veggieboy, then Veggieman, his growth and development attributed to his love of vegetables. He practices his superpowers as he grows, with text and art taking cheap shots at elderly women (as he lifts “a bus filled with chattering grandmas”) and overweight people (as his X-ray vision enables him to see into a house where a rotund man stands, embarrassed and clad only in his underwear: “Some things are better not seen.”) The book ends with Veggieman getting a new name from children who see a stick stuck to his shirt, making the V into a W, and dub him Wedgieman. “We don’t care about spelling,” they assure him when he objects that the word “wedgie” has a “d” and not a double “g.” His new name is sealed when (in an odd turn of events that is, sadly, characteristic of the poorly executed text) he gives himself a wedgie.
In what seems like a veritable golden age of beginning readers, perhaps some things are better not published. Or read. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-93071-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Unfortunately this slim slice of Claudel’s life makes for a prim little picture book; both story and art are suffused with...
A well-meaning picture-book debut features an episode from the life of a 19th-century artist.
Ziarnik’s fascination with Camille Claudel, the pioneering French academic sculptor and protégé of Rodin, led to this brief, stiffly imagined encounter between Claudel and her real-life child-muse, Madeleine Boyer, during a sojourn at Madeleine and her grandmother's country house. This little girl inspired Claudel’s iconic sculpture La Petite Châtelaine (The Little Lady). The determined and beautiful artist sculpts the child while kindly guiding the child’s creation of a little clay bird for her Grand-mère. Though backmatter refers to Claudel’s “passionate temperament,” there is precious little earthiness or intensity here. Dunn’s accompanying art is an awkwardly composed succession of domestic watercolor tableaux that owe more to Disney than Millet. Annoyingly, Dunn depicts the three female characters with coiffures featuring escaping, wispy hair tendrils—presumably a shorthand for their preoccupation with art and housewifely duty. Worse, the closing spread of Claudel’s leave-taking is almost impossible to decode visually: Claudel is actually pressing a lump of clay and sculpting tools into the child’s hands.
Unfortunately this slim slice of Claudel’s life makes for a prim little picture book; both story and art are suffused with greeting-card optimism and sentimental speculation. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59078-855-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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