A clever, royal tale with plenty of Christian elements to discuss, included in a helpful guide at the end.
A cook and a king collide in the kitchen in this debut picture book.
Elderly cook Gracie endures a long, restless night. King Jack, whose room is just below hers, snores. His dog, Folksy, barks in his sleep. The grandfather clock is noisy. So Gracie feels very tired—so tired that when the king and his dog race through the kitchen, she tips over the spaghetti sauce and sends it flying, all over the monarch. To keep his burns from the hot sauce from becoming too serious, Gracie pours ice cold water over him. She follows that with sugar, which she knows will take the sting from the burns. The ruler is enraged; just what is his cook doing to him? He stands precariously, and Folksy takes that moment to obey the order to “come” that his master had uttered earlier, sending both the royal and the canine careening back into the mess of now-cooled sauce. But the fall allows the monarch time to realize that his burns don’t hurt, and gives Gracie a chance to explain her actions. King Jack licks the sugar-sweetened sauce from his coat and jokes that the flavor is delicious, but rather than following that line of thought, the story jumps to his generous request: “Cook… Do you think we can start again?” The monarch and Gracie clean the kitchen, then dine together on humble sandwiches and soup. The narrative of mistakes and forgiveness—on the parts of both characters—makes this work an original, folkish tale. While children may be surprised that the king offers to help his cook clean the kitchen, notes for discussion at the end of the story indicate there are biblical reasons for the monarch’s move, and illuminate the Christian angle behind the text by Grandma Tea and her granddaughters. In the whimsical but mismatched illustrations, Lamare captures the chaos of the events, but fails to conform to the character descriptions: elderly Gracie is pictured as a young cook with red hair, and the middle-aged king is spry, young, and thin. Both wear crosses, to clue in readers that the spiritual aspects exist. This simple story is appropriate for Sunday school classes.
A clever, royal tale with plenty of Christian elements to discuss, included in a helpful guide at the end.Pub Date: May 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7263-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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