Lap readers are sure to enjoy this trip into a canine imagination—and use this journey to jump-start their own art projects.
A dog wonders why everything around him is so strange in this rhyming ode to imagination from debut author and illustrator Duggan.
Opening with a potentially confusing image of extra-long dog legs on the borders and a teeny-tiny pup playing ball in the center, this picture book introduces black-and-white dog Baxter, who explores a world of “singing sneaker trees / beside a swarm of cupcake bees” populated by spaghetti-haired humans, cats with donut hats, and other strange creatures. Baxter realizes the strangeness, and when he wonders aloud how he got there, a seed explains to him that he’s in his own imagination. In her illustrations, Duggan takes the imagination’s wandering to delightfully absurd ends sure to tickle toddlers and other lap readers. Her design (with large letters spelling out the word “Bark” for effect when Baxter calls out) and color choices are appealing, though the palette is somewhat subdued. The metaphor of the imagination’s voice coming from a seed is sure to appeal to adult readers, who can use the book to encourage their young ones to express themselves through their own artistic ideas, whether, like Duggan’s, these images are abstract or built on scribbles or just silly, like polka-dotted elephants and peanut butter–and-jelly mountains. Although Duggan’s rhymes sometimes scan a bit unevenly, the ideas here are the fun part.
Lap readers are sure to enjoy this trip into a canine imagination—and use this journey to jump-start their own art projects.Pub Date: May 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5323-3748-2
Page Count: 33
Publisher: Written and Red(tm)
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In an imaginative wordless picture book, Wiesner (illustrator of Kite Flyer, 1986) tours a dream world suggested by the books and objects in a boy's room. A series of transitions—linked by a map in the book that the boy was reading as he fell asleep—wafts him, pajama-clad, from an aerial view of hedge-bordered fields to a chessboard with chess pieces, some changing into their realistic counterparts (plus a couple of eerie roundheaded figures based on pawns that reappear throughout); next appear a castle; a mysterious wood in which lurks a huge, whimsical dragon; the interior of a neoclassical palace; and a series of fantastic landscapes that eventually transport the boy back to his own bed. Most interesting here are the visual links Wiesner uses in his journey's evolution; it's fun to trace the many details from page to page. There's a bow to Van Allsburg, and another to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, but Wiesner's broad double-spreads of a dream world—whose muted colors suggest a silent space outside of time—have their own charm. Intriguing.
Pub Date: April 20, 1988
ISBN: 978-0-06-156741-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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