Newcomer McElmurry offers a madcap romp with a plaid that spreads like the flu. Little Madison Pratt finds a purse in the park, a plaid purse with a sad blue inside: “Don't worry. I'll take care of you,” says Madison. But as she steps along, the plaid on the purse starts to crawl up her arm and the next thing you know, Madison has a bad case of the plaids, from her allplaid clothes to the plaid blush on her cheek. She follows her doctor's orders to rest easy, but a small plaid burp escapes her lips (product of the non-plaid cola she is sipping) and taints the rest of the town plaid, all plaid. In a brainstorm, Madison returns to the park where she dropped the purse and turns it inside out, only to release a plague of melancholy blue over everything. Life returns to normal only after Madison sings an extra-silly round of her extra-silly song, which just goes to show that “as you probably already knew, with a silly grin on you can't stay blue.” McElmurry has written the story in rhyme, but she keeps the wordplay on the ragged side, with broken syncopations, to keep both readers and listeners alert. The artwork is jazzy and two-dimensional, with, of course, the emphasis on color, as a book about plaid really ought to do. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: April 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-16951-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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