With smart witticisms to launch each quick-paced chapter, Isaiah is truly a mouse that roars.
Prolific Patterson and frequent collaborator Grabenstein offer this charming tale of Isaiah, a blue (yes—bright blue!) mouse, and his effort to break his family out of a very bad place.
Isaiah and his 96 siblings have been raised in a lab since birth, so they don’t really know what the outside world is like. Isaiah’s big brother Benji was the one to come up with a plan to break them all out…but only Isaiah is fortunate enough to make it to freedom. Alone in a huge and unfamiliar world filled with unexpected pleasures and dangers, Isaiah is lucky to find Mikayla, a beautiful but ordinary mouse with an extraordinary talent: she sings! Mikayla brings Isaiah back to her family (appropriately called a “mischief” in mouse vernacular), who formally adopts him. But Isaiah misses his original family, and with the help of his new relatives and a human friend or two, he mounts a daring rescue to save his siblings. Narrator Isaiah is a well-read mouse, and, without being pedantic about it, he shows off his vocabulary at every opportunity; his literacy comes in handy more than once, demonstrating its practicality as well. Sutphin provides black-and-white spot illustrations that recall the great mouse protagonists of the mid-20th century.
With smart witticisms to launch each quick-paced chapter, Isaiah is truly a mouse that roars. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-34956-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Certain to steal hearts.
In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary.
She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. Applegate deftly tempers themes of grief and loss with compassion and humor as Ruby finds her place in the herd. The author’s note touches on climate change, the illegal ivory trade, and conservation efforts, but the highly emotive framing of the story through the memories of a bewildered baby elephant emphasizes the impact of lines such as “ ‘in Africa,’ I say softly, ‘there were bad people,’ ” without offering readers a nuanced understanding of the broader context that drives poaching.
Certain to steal hearts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780063080089
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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