Another clever, quirky outing.
A free shopping spree turns into a race against time—never a happy idea when you’re a sloth.
Too logy even to get to the phone before the answering machine kicks in, Sloth learns that he has only eight hours to claim his spree at the store. Can he make it? Being narcoleptic as well as slow-moving, his ensuing odyssey quickly turns hilariously suspenseful as Seibold urges readers to form a cheering section with lines printed in a different color—“Yay, Sloth! Let’s go, Sloth!” In the characteristically stylized illustrations, Sloth’s frozen, masklike features add a Buster Keaton–ish air to his frantic efforts. Having dragged his way down the street and into the park, where a hoped-for shortcut becomes a long detour/nap, Sloth arrives in the nick of time on a stolen hang glider. His spree turns out to be short but sweet, as he immediately rams his cart into a pile of pillows and passes out. The author cranks tongue further into cheek with witty side business, like a glimpse of an Occupy! camp in the park and, at the end, a one-person pillow fight (“Yay, Sloth! You won!”).
Another clever, quirky outing. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938073-35-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McSweeney's McMullens
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
A low-cal alternative to the more nutritious likes of Jinny Johnson’s Atlas of Animals or Jenkins’ magisterial Animal Book...
A populous but indigestible flurry of paper-collage animal portraits, not exactly enhanced by inept rhymed commentary and pop-ups.
The survey begins with a spread of sharks headlined by a gaping 3-D great white, oddly placed over a round die-cut hole so that it looks hollow and a school of tuna on the next spread is visible down its gullet. The album proceeds to take viewers from ocean deeps to the jungle, a grassland and on to the South Pole in arrays that alternate between groupings of related creatures and representative general menageries. The animals are created with colorfully contrasting pieces of cut paper but look flatter and less realistic than Steve Jenkins’ similarly constructed images. They are identified on each crowded spread but aren’t shown to scale and mingle without reference to home continents. Though the great white does flash an anatomically correct five rows of teeth, the four pop-ups, particularly an emperor penguin with an angular head that looks more like a pterodactyl’s, aren’t realistic. The rhymes range from forced (“tenpins/penguins”) to meaningless (“Eyes peep down like mischievous flunkeys, / a chittering, chattering…troop of monkeys”) and include a reference to a “lounge of lizards.” Deutch offers a closing page of prose facts about selected animals that includes a confusingly punctuated reference to the emperor’s “ ‘brood’ pouch.”
A low-cal alternative to the more nutritious likes of Jinny Johnson’s Atlas of Animals or Jenkins’ magisterial Animal Book (both 2013). (Informational pop-up. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4549-0812-8
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Monkey business allows young children to make a serious transition from early readers to chapter books.
As reading reluctance can build from the first stages of literacy, this debut title in a series of illustrated chapter books aims to hook both struggling and new readers. Clyde—rambunctious, a little mischievous and the epitome of the reluctant reader—often envisions himself as a monkey. On a school field trip to a science and history museum, he encounters two problems that lead to nonstop adventure. After bumping into a thief disguised as a museum guard, his gift-shop version of the Golden Monkey icon is switched with the real artifact. The boy also eats a scientist’s radioactive banana (it was blasted with a gamma ray), which enables his inner monkey to turn him into a real monkey. Traditional illustrated text turns to a graphic-novel format when Clyde accidentally and then on purpose turns into a monkey. Not even his brainy, no-nonsense twin sister, Claudia, can control Clyde’s monkey self as teachers and other school workers chase him through the school hallways. The action peaks when the thief shows up at school, pretending to be a substitute teacher and wanting his stolen Golden Monkey back. While this series doesn’t have aspirations to high literature, it does fulfill an important developmental reading need with high-interest humor and adventure. (Adventure. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-55977-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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