A lost favorite toy is the impetus behind this tale of the adventure one rabbit might be having when he is away from home. Tatty Ratty, Molly’s favorite stuffed bunny, is missing again, and a thorough search of all the usual places turns up nothing. Molly is heartbroken, but with a little encouragement from her parents, she imagines what Tatty Ratty is doing out in the world. Hopping off the bus, Tatty Ratty finds his way on to a train where he gets new, blue buttons for the ones that he lost. Molly then imagines that he has breakfast with the Three Bears. A healthy serving of porridge fattens him back to his old self. Feeling full, he hops a ride with Cinderella, who mends him and brushes his fur. Taking her own bath, Molly imagines that Tatty Ratty jumps into the ocean for a dip before hitching a ride on a pirate ship. Molly’s father helps the tale by suggesting that the little rabbit is taking a dragon ride to the moon where the Man in the Moon sprinkles him in moondust, turning his fur white. Tatty Ratty is on his way home as he hops aboard a spaceship destined for Earth. A trip to the Kingdom of Bunny store finds that Tatty Ratty is right there waiting for Molly among all the other bunnies sitting on a shelf. Whimsical illustrations depict the dual story of Tatty Ratty’s adventures and Molly’s life at home without her toy. Parents of young children will definitely want to keep this tale in mind should their child’s own Tatty Ratty take off. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: March 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-37386-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skip it
This book wants to be feminist.
Princess Penelope Pineapple, illustrated as a white girl with dark hair and eyes, is the Amelia Bloomer of the Pineapple Kingdom. She has dresses, but she prefers to wear pants as she engages in myriad activities ranging from yoga to gardening, from piloting a plane to hosting a science fair. When it’s time for the Pineapple Ball, she imagines wearing a sparkly pants outfit, but she worries about Grand Lady Busyboots’ disapproval: “ ‘Pants have no place on a lady!’ she’d say. / ‘That’s how it has been, and that’s how it shall stay.’ ” In a moment of seeming dissonance between the text and art, Penny seems to resolve to wear pants, but then she shows up to the ball in a gown. This apparent contradiction is resolved when the family cat, Miss Fussywiggles, falls from the castle into the moat and Princess Penelope saves her—after stripping off her gown to reveal pink, flowered swimming trunks and a matching top. Impressed, Grand Lady Busyboots resolves that princesses can henceforth wear whatever they wish. While seeing a princess as savior rather than damsel in distress may still seem novel, it seems a stretch to cast pants-wearing as a broadly contested contemporary American feminist issue. Guthrie and Oppenheim’s unimaginative, singsong rhyme is matched in subtlety by Byrne’s bright illustrations.
Skip it . (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2603-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Unimpeachable.
A nearly wordless exploration of Aesop’s fable of symbiotic mercy that is nothing short of masterful.
A mouse, narrowly escaping an owl at dawn, skitters up what prove to be a male lion’s tail and back. Lion releases Mouse in a moment of bemused gentility and—when subsequently ensnared in a poacher’s rope trap—reaps the benefit thereof. Pinkney successfully blends anthropomorphism and realism, depicting Lion’s massive paws and Mouse’s pink inner ears along with expressions encompassing the quizzical, hapless and nearly smiling. He plays, too, with perspective, alternating foreground views of Mouse amid tall grasses with layered panoramas of the Serengeti plain and its multitudinous wildlife. Mouse, befitting her courage, is often depicted heroically large relative to Lion. Spreads in watercolor and pencil employ a palette of glowing amber, mouse-brown and blue-green. Artist-rendered display type ranges from a protracted “RRROAARRRRRRRRR” to nine petite squeaks from as many mouselings. If the five cubs in the back endpapers are a surprise, the mouse family of ten, perched on the ridge of father lion’s back, is sheer delight.
Unimpeachable. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-01356-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
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