Being just a single spread, it’s a quick visit—but big and busy enough to draw and please several viewers at once.
A double-gatefold map opens flat to display a pop-up Ferris wheel and other attractions at an annual festival held in the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh.
A booklet inset at the corner describes the route that excited young visitors Neela and his little sister Peela take, but it can also be traced thanks to labels on the map. First they go to the balloon man, then up on the high, hand-powered wheel. Once down, they proceed past drummers and shops (“HANKIES, coloured HANKIES!” “COCONUT BURFI! TOFFEE! LADDOO!”) to the ice cream man (“CHOC-O-BAR!” he shouts. “PINEAPPLE! PISTA!”). There’s a stop at a photo studio and finally the road home. In the traditional style of his Bhil people, Amaliyar creates an aerial view of carnival grounds crowded with stylized figures depicted in bright primary colors and covered in decorative rows of colored dots. Along with the food, some of the activities on view—a fistfight, bows and arrows pointed in various directions—distinguish this carnival from the typical North American sort (and going unmentioned is the real fair’s marriage market, in which young couples are given an opportunity to elope), but the illustrations and the narrative are both vibrant with the celebratory energy that carnivals everywhere evoke.
Being just a single spread, it’s a quick visit—but big and busy enough to draw and please several viewers at once. (afterword) (Pop-up picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-93-83145-11-9
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Tara Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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