An exhilarating dive propelled by deft and clever use of its optical trick.
Though eager to help his friend Peter the Penguin, whose submarine has stalled, Ludwig is stymied by the fact that, being paper himself and having been raised in a “world of books,” all he knows of real water is from pictures of ponds and fish.
Following an accident with a glass of water, he’s left to dry flat between the pages of a collection of fairy tales, where he meets, along with some familiar characters (“Don’t eat Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. It won’t end well for you,” he solemnly informs a wolf), a fairy queen who grants his wish to make the ocean real in a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It’s off to the rescue—and to encounters, in a dazzling climactic double gatefold, with schools of swimming sausages and other nautical wonders. Even without the cardboard “sea goggles” Löhlein’s illustrations are lively and at least mostly sharp. With the 3-D enhancement, Ludwig and his animal friends (all of whom are portrayed as cutout figures) float convincingly among piles of closed and open volumes, dense swarms of fish and multitentacled creatures, droplets of water, and long trails of bubbles—so much so that for many viewers the actual surfaces of the pages will vanish. The white, blonde fairy queen is the only human figure in the pictures.
An exhilarating dive propelled by deft and clever use of its optical trick. (Novelty picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61067-708-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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 all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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