Rarely will a book review recommend watching TV over reading a book, but in this case, find the remote.
Ruff Ruffman’s second literary outing is much lighter than the first (Doggie Duties, 2014), especially in the science department.
Whereas his first foray onto the page included many science facts and a cool experiment involving filtering water, this episode is a dud. The story is far-fetched, featuring an invitation to the Poodle Ball, a missing pair of fancy pants, a fax that cancels the show, a green vehicle, a trip to Australia and a dog-hating network owner; the science experiment in the backmatter only tangentially relates to a tiny part of the story: Using aluminum foil, readers construct boats of different shapes and test their carrying capacities and floating abilities with pennies in a bowl of water; in Ruff’s tale, he, Blossom and Chet forget to add the submarine feature to their green vehicle, so they save it from sinking by tying pineapples all around it. Those who love the show love it for Ruff’s tone of voice, Blossom’s sassy attitude and quiet intelligence, the many sound effects, and the cool things that the human guests get to do in exploring science and solving problems. Almost all of that is missing in print editions of the TV show.
Rarely will a book review recommend watching TV over reading a book, but in this case, find the remote. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7278-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The good Doctor may be dead these 20 years, but he’s still good for splendid surprises.
Seven rhymed tales, dug from hard to find places! Look for millions of Seuss fans with bright shiny faces!
As Seuss scholar Charles D. Cohen notes in his buoyant introduction, the stories—all published in magazines in the early 1950s, but never elsewhere except, for some, in audio editions—catch Ted Geisel at the time he gave over writing in prose, inspired by new insight into the capacity of children to absorb and enjoy words and word sounds. His command of language and cadence is sure, while the pedantry that sometimes weighed down his later work is also visible but only lightly applied: Extreme greed leads to the loss of a wish-granting seed in the title story, for instance, and an overfed “Gustav, the Goldfish” outgrows every container. (The latter story is an early version of an unrhymed tale published by Seuss’ first wife, Helen Palmer, as A Fish Out Of Water.) In other premises that saw service elsewhere, “The Great Henry McBride” ambitiously daydreams of future careers, and a “Strange Shirt Spot” keeps moving from place to place despite a frantic lad’s efforts to remove it. The buffed-up illustrations look brand new, and despite occasional signs of age—“Oranges! Apples! And all kinds of fruits! / And nine billion Hopalong Cassidy suits!”—the writing is as fresh, silly and exhilarating as it must have been when first seen.
The good Doctor may be dead these 20 years, but he’s still good for splendid surprises. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-86435-3
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An evocative and effective retelling of an old classic.
The rich may ignore the poor, but the Piper must be paid.
A tall orphan with a crutch narrates this retelling of the familiar tale. In his village, Hamelin, "the rich and the greedy [live] like kings and queens," while the needy scrounge for food in the rat-ridden streets. The boy and his best friend Emma fight back against the vermin. One day, the mayor sees the duo in action and appoints them his personal "rat boy and rat girl." Unfortunately, they can do little to keep the rats away from wealthy homes. Just when things seem most hopeless, a meeting of the town council is crashed by an arresting figure dressed in an outrageous costume: The Pied Piper. Playing his beautiful silver flute, he leads the rats away, but, when the mayor reneges on his promise to pay, the Piper extracts revenge by luring the children away, too. The slow-moving narrator is left behind, and it falls to him to bring the Piper and the children back. It is a nuanced and substantial retelling of the well-known morality tale; young readers can identify with the resourceful narrator, and adults may find relevance, given current economic woes. Chichester Clark's pencil-and-acrylic illustrations are bright and beautifully composed; the teeming rats radiate menace without being actively scary.
An evocative and effective retelling of an old classic. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4824-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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