Children may notice that the adults reading with them are weeping—a history lesson and conversation starter in one book.
Two Canadian friends, one born just two minutes after the other, go to the Western Front.
Goldstyn’s amusing cartoons develop the two boys’ friendship, one in which Jules is “always two minutes behind Jim,” but no matter: “Jules looked up to Jim, and Jim looked out for Jules.” When war breaks out, Jules and Jim enlist, Jules, always a bit late, stuck with a uniform that doesn’t quite fit and crossing the Atlantic in an old ship that’s seen better days. “Jules and Jim had imagined war to be full of epic battles and glorious charges,” but they soon realize trench warfare is anything but. (A magnified louse makes this perfectly clear.) This extra-long picture book is related in a wry, matter-of-fact tone that lets Goldstyn’s watercolors arc shells across the gutter, back and forth, explosive violence alternating with vignettes that depict increasing hardship for everyone. In its compact, elliptical way, it’s an extremely effective narrative of World War I, always grounded in its two protagonists. Jim is decorated, while Jules, always late, peels potatoes. An armistice is signed and a cease-fire designated at 11:00 on Nov. 11—but at 10:58 Jim goes over the top and is killed, the illustrations confronting this violence clearly. Home without his friend, Jules becomes a watchmaker, and all his timepieces run two minutes slow. Jim and Jules are both white, as are their fellow soldiers and adversaries.
Children may notice that the adults reading with them are weeping—a history lesson and conversation starter in one book. (author’s note) (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77147-348-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Though looser in weave than previous appearances, still this provides the emotional honesty readers have come to expect
Antic third-grader Clementine faces her biggest challenge yet: looming change.
It’s the last week of school before summer, and everyone is excited except for Clementine, who definitely does not feel ready for fourth grade. Whenever her beloved Mr. D’Matz tries to talk about it, Clementine avoids the subject. Fortunately, she’s got a few things to keep her occupied. Classmates Maria and Rasheed are planning their wedding, and Clementine is deeply involved, acting as proxy wedding planner since her bossy upstairs neighbor, Margaret, is an expert. Her mother is expecting a new baby, “nesting” in ever more comical fashion, and Clementine is working hard on a good name for the tyke. Perhaps hardest of all, vegetarian Clementine is subjecting her father to the silent treatment, since he will not give up meat. While it’s gratifying to see how much Clementine has grown—much as Clementine might herself suspect she hasn’t—this outing doesn’t pack the punch of previous books. The wedding subplot in particular feels superfluous, and both Clementine’s apprehension about change and her insistence on the moral high ground feel deserving of center stage. Still, her ebullience will likely carry readers past this to the valuable understanding that changewillcome and sometimes the best you can hope for is a compromise.
Though looser in weave than previous appearances, still this provides the emotional honesty readers have come to expect (. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4231-2358-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Disappointing.
Grumpy Monkey moves from picture books to a graphic-novel chapter book, in which he tolerates his friends’ goofy antics during a group journey to an orange grove.
Divided into three chapters of cartoon-style comics, with bonus interludes in between, the book features Jim Panzee, the protagonist of the Grumpy Monkey picture-book series. He is on his relaxing Wednesday Walk, stress orange in hand, but little is quiet about his journey once his jungle friends appear. After the accumulation of unwanted companions causes Jim to squeeze his stress orange so hard that he destroys it, the group seeks a replacement, stopping for a papaya fight, a splash party in the water, and some swinging from vines. They eventually escape angry parrots with the only orange the parrots didn’t devour. There’s a good dose of potty humor: Leslie the giraffe responds to Norman the gorilla’s invitation to come along with “you bet your butt I do,” and two spreads are devoted to poop humor (with Jim as the butt of the joke). There’s also wordplay (a chapter called “Orange Ya Glad We Made It?”; Jim’s repeated mantra, “Squeeze, squeeze, mind at ease”; and a guide to speaking Jim’s nonsense language, in which the syllable ob is inserted before vowels in every word). That the book pauses for a “Primate Primer” with talking simians will be like pouring lemon juice on a cut for those readers who see in anthropomorphized monkeys a perpetuation of pernicious anti-Black stereotypes.
Disappointing. (Graphic fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30601-7
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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