A fun-filled fractured-fairy-tale frolic.
Fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters work together to solve a mystery of disappearing belongings and missing children.
The story’s clever concept references that famous Old Woman who lived in a shoe, but here the woman lives in a book-shaped house on a bookshelf along with many other well-known children’s-story characters such as Jack and Jill and the Three Bears. The Old Woman is actually a busy mother of six with springy, gray hair and a lively demeanor. When she discovers her children are missing, she visits the other book houses on the shelf to ask for help. Each of the characters is missing something, and they all follow along as a group to search for their items and the children. The Big Bad Wolf is the culprit, predictably, and the children are found hiding from him in the branches of surrounding trees along with their father, the Old Man of “knick-knack paddywhack” fame. The characters celebrate at a concluding party with treats provided by the Wicked Witch from her candy-covered cottage. Bright, cartoon-style illustrations are filled with amusing details from all the nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale settings. Though the buoyant illustrations and plot move along in a sprightly fashion, however, the dialogue (conveyed in speech bubbles) is rather pedestrian. The Old Woman and her children present white; some of the other human characters seem to be diverse.
A fun-filled fractured-fairy-tale frolic. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-49305-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t sleep on this one.
An energetic, insomniac romp of an anti-bedtime book.
A wakeful child narrator recounts the goings-on in a large, multiracial family’s zany household long after everyone should be asleep. Rhyming verse with a singsong cadence details activities ranging from the mundane (“Grandma’s at her needlework. / Dad is baking bread. / My brother’s making laundry lists / of every book he’s read”) to the bizarre (“Now Mom just took an audience / with Queen Sigrid the Third. / My brother has just taught the cat a dozen dirty words”). It’s a rollicking read-aloud, but inconsistent line breaks may cause some to slip up upon first reading. Pop-culture references pep things up and range from the stodgy (Sinatra, “Clementine”) to the very contemporary (poke tattoos, the film Condorman), though the conceit drags on a bit too long. Throughout, Harris’ illustrations have a retro feel that evokes, at turns, Tomie Ungerer and Maira Kalman, and they expand on the details of the text to ratchet up the humor and drama—building on the mention of a lake to depict the setting not as a mere house but an elaborate lighthouse. The conclusion shows the narrator descending the stairs to find everyone asleep at daybreak, a predictable, yet satisfying, end.
Don’t sleep on this one. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7805-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Small and reminiscent of the emotional feel of The Runaway Bunny, this is an intimate bedtime book with a global theme....
A simple question enables the author/illustrator to travel around the world in her poetic and visual answers.
Starting on a Vieques, Puerto Rico, beach, a mother answers the question posed by her son and tells him her love ranges to places as far-flung as the glaciers of Antarctica, the Ladakh Himalayas and the Great Barrier Reef. Delacre uses her soft pastels to depict such images as the sinuous natural forms of a desert in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, where a woman in traditional dress cradles an infant, and the text reads: “I love you to the crests of the desert / where the wind sweeps sand from the dunes.” As the book comes full circle, the original mother tucks her son in and asks, “And how far do you love me?” He answers, “I love you to the moon!” On the last page, in a beautiful, deep night sky, the question appears in different languages in original scripts (with no transliterations or pronunciations, a missed opportunity). Although the place names on each double-page spread can be difficult to read, that information is also provided on a map at the end.
Small and reminiscent of the emotional feel of The Runaway Bunny, this is an intimate bedtime book with a global theme. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60060-882-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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