Too thin to fly as either tour or tribute but a memorable showcase nonetheless for a talented French paper artist.
Silhouettes, both printed and laser-cut, add sparkle to a quick tour of London sites and starry skies conducted by Mary Poppins.
Michael and Jane are thrilled when their nanny (literally) drops in on the end of a kite string, and spit-spot they’re off to see Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Piccadilly—followed by an undersea visit and a flight through comet-filled skies to a circus of constellations. As the text, translated without credit from the original French, is confined to a few wooden couplets along the lines of “On Cherry Tree Lane, it’s a nice day to dream… / To walk in the park or to eat an ice cream,” the stars of the show are Druvert’s illustrations. The black, cut pages are designed to be flipped back and forth to fill in printed cityscapes, marine scenes, and speckled firmaments with fine detail. The marvelous intricacy of the cutout fences, ironwork, trees, strands of seaweed, and small human figures leaves those pages too fragile to survive even moderately careless handling intact, but the intensely black overlay (along with a subtle use of gray tones in the backgrounds) creates a sense of depth and, often, an evocative shimmer of light. A large die-cut window in the front cover offers a hint of the visual pleasures within.
Too thin to fly as either tour or tribute but a memorable showcase nonetheless for a talented French paper artist. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-500-65104-9
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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