Starting outside a house, the reader’s viewpoint moves indoors page by page until there “sat Celeste, hunched over her work table” under the floorboards. Celeste’s a mouse, her nest cozy and treasured—until it becomes unsafe, forcing her to look elsewhere for her own sheltered spot to call home. Her antagonists are bullying rats, a housecat, a rainstorm and blustery humans hosting John James Audubon as their guest. Celeste befriends Audubon’s 15-year-old assistant, Joseph, advising birds how to pose for portraits (and becoming horrified when Audubon pins down wings to force positions). Cole’s complexly shaded pencil drawings are a wonder of shifting angle and scale. Often his pencil work wholly covers entire spreads; the type lies on top of the drawing without dominating the aesthetic. Some drawings are smaller, but the art steadily resides at the heart of this uniquely beautiful depiction of 1821 Lousiana (plantation house, wildlife, trees) and a sweet, guileless mouse searching for a nest and friends. A rare gift: a novel with artwork as whole and vital as a picture book’s. (afterword) (Animal fantasy. 6-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-170410-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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