Best shared with preschoolers just learning irony.
An ill-tempered rat’s efforts to shake off a supposed stalker ultimately take a biting, satiric twist. Literally.
Edgar can’t seem to lose the “worm” that’s following him around no matter how fast he runs around the barn or paddles across the pond. Nor, when he offers the purported pest to a mole, a woodpecker and a pig, does he understand why they berate him for wasting their time. Despite a certain amount of visual misdirection in the low-angled farmyard scenes—Dumont poses Edgar throughout so that his nether regions are hidden by a grassy fringe and populates the ground below with wriggling earthworms—even younger readers will cotton on to the joke well before the rat finally chomps down on what turns out to be his own tail. The other animals, who had never liked him anyway, all find this enormously droll. The tale is not so philosophically or politically resonant as Dumont’s The Chickens Build a Wall (2013) or The Geese March in Step (2014), but it’s a knee-slapper, at least the first time through, with some distant thematic kinship to “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”
Best shared with preschoolers just learning irony. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5457-5
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Full of drama and heart, this is the kind of series that can show newly independent readers the power of a good story.
The second installment in The Masterpiece Adventures series, which stars a human boy named James and his best beetle friend, Marvin, this early chapter book finds Marvin on a very important mission.
Marvin has finally been invited to go collecting! He will join other members of his family as they roam James’ family’s apartment looking for treasures to bring back to their little home in the cupboard. Marvin might be a beetle, but his emotions are all too human and economically communicated as he moves from ambition to jealousy of his cousin (who has scored a shiny dime!) to concern about his uncle, who has been impaled by a pair of nail scissors. After the accident, Marvin knows he must ask James for help, and his confidence is rewarded when James bandages the hurt beetle and gently carries him home. In return for the kindness, Marvin decides to return the only thing he had found on his first collecting mission, a small, pointy black item that turns out to be James’ prize shark tooth. The characters have distinct personalities, the story is well-paced, and the focus on unlikely alliances and mutual trust suffuses the tale with warmth.
Full of drama and heart, this is the kind of series that can show newly independent readers the power of a good story. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-316-2
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
A charmer, like its predecessors.
Little Bear has an exciting experience in store when he follows Papa Bear to work.
In their two previous outings, Bear’s Song (2013) and Bear’s Sea Escape (2014), it’s been Papa Bear chasing after his errant offspring. Here the tables turn: waking from hibernation to find Papa gone, Little Bear gallops in pursuit down a long, winding road that leads him through teeming woodlands, an equally populous underground, and at last to an immense circus tent! There, he sees his dad on the high wire, gets to be blasted out of a cannon, and lands in the arms of—Mama Bear, who has a teeny tiny surprise of her own to present. Along with packing hundreds of diminutive but individually drawn animals, circus performers, and spectators into his oversized scenes, Chaud tucks in humorous side business, such as a glimpse of Alice and the White Rabbit. He also prompts viewers to trail the wide-eyed cub with small die-cut holes of diverse shape that offer previews of tantalizing details on the next spread. The newly expanded ursine clan caps its performance with a further display of spectacular acrobatics, then makes its way home. The spare text is a touch flat, but the loss of the French original’s punning, fun-to-pronounce title, Poupoupidours, is the only real disappointment here.
A charmer, like its predecessors. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-4028-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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