In this story, “first told in Julie’s Wolf Pack [1997],” a little Eskimo boy is given a wolf’s name: Amaroz, after the leader of the wolf pack that had saved his lost and starving older sister. “The wolf pack’s noble black leader had shared his family’s food with her.” One day his sister Julie comes home with two wolf cubs that are sick and hungry. Amaroz loves and cares for one of the cubs and names him Nutik. Julie warns her brother: “ . . . do not come to love this wolf pup. I have promised the wolves we will return the pups when they are fat and well.” But Amaroz does fall in love with the cub. The two become inseparable, and when the cub is grown and it is time to return to the wolves, Amaroz first tries to hide him, then reluctantly lets him go. Amaroz returns home, “His heart broken after all.” But then, Amaroz finds the wolf cub has returned to him to be part of the human family, forsaking the wolves. Rand traveled to Barrow, Alaska, to capture the people and landscapes in the story in watercolor and pencil. His pictures of Nutik are, of course, dreamy, and his focus on the boy and wolf help to indicate the isolation of the terrain. One interesting technique is a wash across the top of many of the pictures, which serves as a link between scenes and when in red indicates the 24-hour day. Night scenes of the dancing wolves, snow, and stars are particularly effective. As a young introduction to the Julie stories, this has great appeal, but it stands alone as a heartwarming story of a boy and his dog (or, in this case, his wolf). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028164-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
A quick but adventuresome paddle into a mysterious realm.
The ocean’s depths offer extra wonders to a child who is briefly left behind on a class trip.
In the wake of their Field Trip to the Moon (2019), a racially diverse group of students boards a submarine (yellow, but not thatone) for a wordless journey to the ocean’s bottom. Donning pressure suits, the children follow their teacher past a swarm of bioluminescent squid, cluster around a black smoker, and pause at an old shipwreck before plodding back. One student, though, is too absorbed in taking pictures to catch the signal to depart and is soon alone amid ancient ruins—where a big, striped, friendly, finny creature who is more than willing to exchange selfies joins the child, but it hides away when the sub-bus swoops back into sight to pick up its stray. Though The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor (1994) carries a considerably richer informational load, in his easy-to-follow sequential panels Hare does accurately depict a spare assortment of benthic life and features, and he caps the outing with a labeled gallery of the errant student’s photos (including “Atlantis?” and “Pliosaur?”). The child is revealed at the end to be Black. Hare also adds cutaway views at the end of a diving suit and the sub. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-19-inch double-page spreads viewed at 40% of actual size.)
A quick but adventuresome paddle into a mysterious realm. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4630-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Silly reads for new readers to dig into.
A turnip-loving duck and its friends defend their garden.
Alas, the duck, sheep, dog, and donkey immediately discover the eponymous pest in the garden when it (a groundhog?) eats a row of beans. The duck is frantic that turnips are next, but instead the pest eats the sheep’s favorite crop: corn. Peas occupy the next row, and the pest gobbles them up, too. Instead of despairing, however, the donkey cries, “Yippee! He ate ALL THE PEAS!” and catching the others’ puzzled looks, continues, “I don’t like peas.” After this humorous twist, the only uneaten row is sown with turnips, and the duck leaps to devour them before the pest can do so. In a satisfying, funny conclusion, the duck beams when the dog, sheep, and donkey resolve to plant a new garden and protect it with a fence, only to find out that it will exclude not just the groundhog, but the duck, too. A companion release, What Is Chasing Duck?, has the same brand of humor and boldly outlined figures rendered in a bright palette, but its storyline doesn’t come together as well since it’s unclear why the duck is scared and why the squirrel that was chasing it doesn’t recognize the others when they turn and chase him at book’s end.
Silly reads for new readers to dig into. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-94165-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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