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
An autobiographical tribute to Polacco’s fifth-grade teacher, the first adult to recognize her learning disability and to help her learn to read. Trisha begins kindergarten with high hopes, but as the years go by she becomes convinced she is dumb. She can draw well, but is desperately frustrated by math and reading. In fifth grade, Mr. Falker silences the children who taunt Trisha, and begins, with a reading teacher, to help her after school. A thank-you to a teacher who made a difference is always welcome, but this one is unbearably sentimental. Although the perspective is supposed to be Trisha’s, many sentences give away the adult viewpoint, e.g., “She didn’t notice that Mr. Falker and Miss Plessy had tears in their eyes.” The extent to which Trisha limns her own misery and deifies Mr. Falker (complete with a classroom version of a “He who is without sin among you” scene) is mawkish. Mr. Falker’s implicit sense of fairness—“Right from the start, it didn’t seem to matter to Mr. Falker which kids were the cutest. Or the smartest. Or the best at anything”—is contradicted when Trisha is the object of praise: Mr. Falker, watching her draw, whispers, “This is brilliant . . . absolutely brilliant. Do you know how talented you are?” Polacco’s disdain for all the other teachers and the students intrudes on Trisha’s more profoundly heartbreaking perspective; the book lacks the author’s usual flair for making personal stories universal. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23166-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
Another win for Judy and her friends.
Determination and hard work prepare Judy Moody as she tests her knowledge of book trivia in a battle of the books.
Judy, little brother Stink, and some familiar classmates from their second and third grade classes are the Virginia Dare School Bookworms, the book quiz champions who will be representing the school in the First Ever Book Quiz Blowout at the Starlight Lanes Bowling Alley. Nervous about their competition—Braintree Academy’s Bloodsucking Fake-Moustache Defenders and their star player, Mighty Fantaskey—the team is taking every possible moment to read: on the bus, during karate class, and even at the dinner table. Stink makes a cape out of scribbled-on sticky notes on the books he’s read, and Judy tries her hand at speed-reading. Enthusiasm for reading is never lost even as the children prepare for the contest. A diverse gathering of familiar titles is referenced throughout, matching this series’ reading level (all titles mentioned are compiled in the backmatter). Building excitement propels the story up through the competition to an ultimately satisfying ending. Reynolds’ well-placed watercolor, tea, and ink illustrations break up text, allowing necessary breaks for bridging readers. Aside from teacher and coach Mr. Todd, who is black, and Mighty Fantaskey, who seems to be a child of color, all characters appear white.
Another win for Judy and her friends. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0484-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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