The creators of Cook-A-Doodle-Doo! (1999) spin off a freewheeling yarn from a familiar nursery rhyme, salting their tale with awful puns and peppering it with folktale references. When Dish and Spoon run away as they’re supposed to, but fail to come back, Cat, Dog, and Cow set off to track them down. (“Without Dish and Spoon, there’s no rhyme. No more diddle, diddle. It’s over.”) Following a giant, very funny map drawn for them by a Fork in the road, the seekers awaken Little Boy Blue, question a huge, lonely spider sitting on a certain tuffet, and are nearly served up by a Big Bad Wolf (in bunny slippers) before finding the errant table setting at last—at the foot of a certain beanstalk. Stevens fills her sprawling, exuberant pictures with hilarious details, from the lamb suit and red cloak hanging on Wolf’s coat rack to the trio of furry customers in dark glasses getting their tails reattached in Jack’s Repair Shop (“You blew it, I glue it”). Dish has suffered a great fall, but Jack nimbly puts her back together, and all leap back to their places just in time to resume (with a slight modification) their traditional roles. Required reading for all Jacks and Jills. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-202298-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina...
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up.
Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields.
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
When Bibi, her first and favorite babysitter, moves away, it takes all of August for 8-year-old Eleanor to get beyond her sense of loss and get used to a new caretaker. Her parents grieve, too; her mother even takes some time off work. But, as is inevitable in a two-income family, eventually a new sitter appears. Natalie is sensible and understanding. They find new activities to do together, including setting up a lemonade stand outside Eleanor’s Brooklyn apartment building, waiting for Val, the mail carrier, and taking pictures of flowers with Natalie’s camera. Gradually Eleanor adjusts, September comes, her new teacher writes a welcoming letter, her best friend returns from summer vacation and third grade starts smoothly. Best of all, Val brings a loving letter from Bibi in Florida. While the story is relatively lengthy, each chapter is a self-contained episode, written simply and presented in short lines, accessible to those still struggling with the printed word. Cordell’s gray-scale line drawings reflect the action and help break up the text on almost every page. This first novel is a promising debut. Eleanor’s concerns, not only about her babysitter, but also about playmates, friends and a new school year will be familiar to readers, who will look forward to hearing more about her life. (Fiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8109-8424-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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