The creators of Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs (2005) again chuck lots of promising elements together—evidently in hopes that they’ll assemble themselves into an exciting, or at least coherent, yarn. They don’t. Shortly after pausing in awe before the huge skeleton of a Giganotosaurus on a class trip to the museum, Flinn and friends fall through a wardrobe—er, closet and find themselves aboard a ship heading for Bag O’ Bones Island, where they fight scaly pirates to recover a treasure stolen from the aforementioned museum. Enter Giganotosaurus at the climax, as a towering pirate who hardly gets to roar before he’s reduced to jelly by the sight of a tiny spider. Ayto illustrates the sketchy plot with frenzied cartoon collages featuring lots of big teeth, jumbled action and a ship that looks like a fugitive from a Monty Python animation. Young readers will give this a perfunctory once-over at best; set them instead on a course for the more seaworthy likes of Deb Lund’s Dinosailors (2003), illustrated by Howard Fine. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6745-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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