Unsuitable for classroom or library shelves but serviceable for solo use.
A learning tool for budding geographers, this first world atlas comes with hundreds of stickers, a sheet of detachable postcards and other reinforcement materials.
With the exception of the Arctic and Antarctica paired on facing pages, the brightly colored regional maps come one per spread. Blanked-out adjacent territories and generous quantities of surrounding ocean provide additional space for short descriptive overviews, boxes of general facts and grids of national flags to match with corresponding stickers from the back. The maps feature country labels, national borders (including Wales and Scotland for the U.K. but not state boundaries for the U.S.), capitals and major cities, color-keyed biomes, and small labeled images of select flora, fauna, sports, and natural or industrial products. On each map at least one of these images is grayed out as a cue for additional sticker matching. The maps look crowded but not bewilderingly busy, and they are current enough to include South Sudan. Along with a page of sendable postcards with preprinted fill-in-the-blank messages (“We started in the north, visiting the _____ Tower in Paris….”), a “Passport” in a front pocket contains map-reading practice questions and even more sticker-placing opportunities.
Unsuitable for classroom or library shelves but serviceable for solo use. (index) (Nonfiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1320-7
Page Count: 31
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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