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
An effective early chapter book conveyed in a slightly overdone gag.
Epistolary dispatches from the eternal canine/feline feud.
Simon the cat is angry. He had done a good job taking care of his boy, Andy, but now that Andy’s parents are divorced, a dog named Baxter has moved into Andy’s dad’s house. Simon believes that there isn’t enough room in Andy’s life for two furry friends, so he uses the power of the pen to get Baxter to move out. Inventively for the early-chapter-book format, the story is told in letters written back and forth; Simon’s are impeccably spelled on personalized stationery while Baxter’s spelling slowly improves through the letters he scrawls on scraps of paper. A few other animals make appearances—a puffy-lipped goldfish who for some reason punctuates her letter with “Blub…blub…” seems to be the only female character (cued through stereotypical use of eyelashes and red lipstick), and a mustachioed snail ferries the mail to and fro. White-appearing Andy is seen playing with both animals as a visual background to the text, as is his friend Noah (a dark-skinned child who perhaps should not be nicknamed “N Man”). Cat lovers will appreciate Simon’s prickliness while dog aficionados will likely enjoy Baxter’s obtuse enthusiasm, and all readers will learn about the time and patience it takes to overcome conflict and jealousy with someone you dislike.
An effective early chapter book conveyed in a slightly overdone gag. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4492-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
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