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CINDERELLA

Name: CINDERELLA
Author: John Fowles

adapted by John Fowles ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1976

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There is no shortage of picture book Cinderellas, but we keep coming back to Marcia Brown. In comparison, Beckett's heroine, a doe-eyed maiden of the sort girls might doodle in their note-books, is simply vacuous, and her prince a languishing fop. Even the stepsisters have a cute, gamin look, and the winged Fairy Godmother must be modeled after Tinker Bell. As for the text, Fowles (The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman) tells it straight and with less elaboration than you might expect. His tone and diction—the younger stepsister says her diamond brooch "really is rather super," the Fairy Godmother gives Cinderella "quite the most magical slippers since time began," and the prince finds the mysterious ball guest "adorable"—are, to be sure, in keeping with our view of the story, but whether that's a plus is another question. Fowles ends with a rhymed moral, which is characteristic of Perrault; this one begins, "A pretty face is very fine,/ But pretty heart's a better sign." To us, the message might just as easily be that a pretty face wins out over ugly ones. And it's hard to see how the story illustrates the rhyme's last line, "Fairies give most to those who try." A frippery.

Pub Date: May 20, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1976

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WRECKING BALL

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14

by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.

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The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.

When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Amulet/Abrams

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK'S CHRISTMAS

by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...

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The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.

The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)