A farm child’s bad day turns about more than once in this helter-skelter episode. Having already been “fussed out” for trying on her big sister’s bonnet, and then letting the goat get hold of it, and then having to endure “every stinging pest in the Georgia mountains” while picking blackberries, Emily’s hopes for an end to her troubles goes glimmering with the arrival of Cecil Bramlett, itinerant photographer. How hard can it be to get family and pets to hold still long enough for a picture? Try . . . impossible. Unfortunately, uninspired visuals send the promising premise glimmering too; not only has Meidell (Full Steam Ahead, not reviewed, etc.) chosen not to depict the first round of domestic chaos, but her brushwork has a heavy, paint-by-numbers look that makes it hard to follow the action in each over-busy scene. A mediocre variation on Nancy Willard’s Simple Pictures Are Best, illustrated by Tomie dePaola (1977). (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56397-161-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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