by Jim Pipe ; illustrated by Maria Taylord ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2014
Fold down the drawbridge and step through. Mind the mucky patches.
Flurries of small-to-tiny flaps give good cause to linger at each stop on this buttery-to-battlements castle tour.
It’s not all typical 13th-century feasting and fighting on display either, as opening teasers warn of 16 anachronistic items (among them a pair of boxer shorts), a lost treasure and a spy—or maybe ghost—to spot along the way. Castle de Chevalier comes equipped with a lord and lady, mail-clad men at arms and servants of diverse sorts. There’s also a well-stocked torture chamber/dungeon and, as revealed in cutaway views and beneath the diminutive die-cut flaps, thriving populations of bats, rats and spiders…not to mention the occasional detached head. The visit ends with a tournament, where tents, spectators and jousting knights can be viewed in situ or rearranged to suit with separate punch-out versions. Except for an arrant disconnect on the chapel spread, Pipe’s flippant commentary supplies tolerable if rudimentary bits of plot and explication. Though not so maniacally awash in microbusiness as the illustrations in Stephen Biesty’s Cross-Sections: Castle (written by Richard Platt, 1994), Taylord’s bustling cartoon scenes may well require a magnifying glass to make out all the detail. The same applies to the cutaways and Victorian-era rooms in the simultaneously published Lift, Look, and Learn Doll’s House.
Fold down the drawbridge and step through. Mind the mucky patches. (Informational novelty. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78312-081-9
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Carlton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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by Marcia Williams & illustrated by Marcia Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2011
A lighthearted recap of some of our oldest tales.
For her latest cartoon foray into ancient cultures, Williams concocts a brisk dash through Egyptian myth and history.
Drawing figures in traditional Egyptian style but with a more natural range of expressions and gestures, she constructs flat-planed scenes that range from small sequential strips to full-page images and even larger ones on double gatefolds. Her nine episodes begin with a creation myth, end with Cleopatra’s death and in between introduce a select set of major gods and Pharaohs. Large and small, each picture is decked with strings of hieroglyphic-like signs for atmosphere as well as side comments in dialogue balloons to go with the short, legible captions. Though she freely mixes legend and fact without distinguishing one from the other in the main going, a smaller strip running below provides a cat’s-eye view of the subject. The patterns of Egyptian daily life (“Cats are Egypt’s greatest wonder, followed by the river Nile”), how mummies were made (“Yes, we do cats, too!”), early technological advances and general cultural values receive tongue-in-cheek glosses. The colorful, briefly told stories provide nothing like a systematic overview but are easily enjoyed for themselves, and they may well leave young readers with a hankering to find out more about Isis and Horus, Zoser, Hatshepsut, Tutankhamen and the rest.
A lighthearted recap of some of our oldest tales. (map) (Picture book/folklore. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5308-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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by Barb Rosenstock & illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2012
In a boyish three-day adventure, Teedie (Roosevelt) and Johnnie (Muir) dodge, if temporarily, the confines of more formal...
Theodore Roosevelt’s 1903 trip to the western parks included a backcountry camping trip—complete with snowstorm—with John Muir in the Yosemite Wilderness and informed the president’s subsequent advocacy for national parks and monuments.
In a boyish three-day adventure, Teedie (Roosevelt) and Johnnie (Muir) dodge, if temporarily, the confines of more formal surroundings to experience firsthand the glories of the mountains and ancient forests. (You can't ever quite take the boy out of the man, and Rosenstock's use of her subjects’ childhood names evokes a sense of Neverland ebullience, even as the grownup men decided the fate of the wilderness.) The narrative is intimate and yet conveys the importance of the encounter both as a magnificent getaway for the lively president and a chance for the brilliant environmentalist to tell the trees’ side of the story. Gerstein’s depiction of the exuberant president riding off with Muir is enchantingly comical and liberating. A lovely two-page spread turns the opening to a long vertical to show the two men in the Mariposa Grove, relatively small even on horseback, surrounded by the hush and grandeur of the giant sequoias, while in another double-page scene, after a photo of the two at Glacier Point, Muir lies on his back at the edge of the canyon, demonstrating to an attentive Roosevelt how the glacier carved the deep valley below. An author’s note explains that the dialogue is imagined and reconstructed from Muir’s writing as well as from other accounts of the meeting.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3710-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
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