Readers will be happy to spend time with Sam the Man
Sam is saddled with a rutabaga as his vegetable for the next two weeks in second-grade science.
Sam doesn’t like any kind of vegetable, but once he sees his rutabaga—“the size of a softball”; “round, but not perfectly round”; half purple and half “dirty yellow”; and with “a weird brown thing sticking out of the top like a little tree stump”—he is sure he’s got the worst. How is he supposed to write a letter from the rutabaga’s perspective? Drawing a smiley face on it helps, as does naming it. All of a sudden Sam becomes deeply protective of Rudy. How can he make Rudy happy? Well, as his elderly friend and walking companion, Mr. Stockfish, tells him, rutabagas grow underground, so Rudy must want some nice dirt. Thus is born Sam’s plan to collect neighbors’ food scraps and make a compost pile in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard, where he boards his chicken, Helga. While this outing is not as obviously purposive as series opener Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan (2016), it is equally appealing. Sam’s simultaneous awareness that Rudy is not alive and deepening investment in Rudy’s well-being are developmentally spot-on. Dowell’s characterizations are deft, accomplished in small but telling details. Sam is white, as is Mrs. Kerner, and Mr. Stockfish is black; the romance developing between the latter two is a quiet delight.
Readers will be happy to spend time with Sam the Man . (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4069-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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