A visually striking container for an extended metaphor about bullying, this overbuilt app gets too caught up in its own design to allow the story to breathe and enchant.
A small, faceless boy named Benjamin Brewster travels a scary 972 steps every day to get to school. Once at the gothic, fortresslike “School for the Misguided,” the imaginative boy is bullied by monstrous, laughing giants. Benjamin finds a refuge in a nearby patch of dandelions, and while they don't literally help him fly away, the story makes clear that it's his flights of imagination that save him. Feel free, kids who are bullied, to decide if this is a winning strategy. While the story is illustrated with beautifully hazy, dreamlike illustrations that make excellent use of contrast and depth, the story and navigation fail to balance out the imagery. The mechanics of the navigation—a lever to advance pages, tiny hidden buttons that appear inspired by Web-browser icons and narration that must be manually activated on each page—feel aimed at adult Tim Burton fans rather than children. One design feature that does feel magical allows readers to “blow” a dandelion, but the gimmick grows old. A merchandise page within the app offers, among other products, a wristband that says, "Bullying is for people with no imagination." So are bromides. The visuals may be more than enough for some, but as a story for the bullied, it fails to adequately stand up for itself. (iPad storybook app. 5-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Protein
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
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