A creative, thought-provoking examination of the deeper questions in life, as told from a Buddhist perspective.
A melancholic king discovers the secret to happiness and contentment.
This third installment in a trilogy of “wisdom tales” (after The Unwanted Guest, 2011, and The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross, 2010) is based on the adage it’s named for. A “kind and noble king” observes the constant collision of grief and joy in everyday life. He calls on wise men to unlock the secret to lasting happiness, but all they can do is pontificate and argue. He decides to disguise himself as a commoner and eventually meets a man who offers him the perspective he’s been longing for—namely that everything (whether good or bad) is temporary. The ideas in the story are derived from the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, which affirms that change is the one universal constant. Much like its predecessors, this app is characterized by grayscale images enhanced with various splashes of color. The film-quality animation is three-dimensional and offers various perspectives each time the app is launched. Text artfully tumbles onto the screen letter by letter; once the text block is in place, it can be scattered from side to side with a tilt of the tablet. The story offers a plethora of sound effects, a record-it-myself option or full narration with accompanying text in Spanish, French or English.
A creative, thought-provoking examination of the deeper questions in life, as told from a Buddhist perspective. (iPad storybook app. 8-12)Pub Date: July 13, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Moving Tales, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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