Heartfelt, if florid.
An imagined tale of Francis of Assisi as a boy doing good foreshadows later saintly activities.
His Nonna, his Babbo, his Mamma and the maid are all still asleep, but Francis moves quietly in the dawn. Everyone is tired from staying up the night before, worrying about the she-wolf threatening the town and the livestock. When Francis goes out to tend the animals, he sees the shadow of the wolf. He brings the wolf an egg and some goat’s milk in a bowl, and she departs, leaving child and farm animals in peace, a presaging of the older Francis’ actions in the legend of the Wolf of Gubbio. Nobisso laces her telling with a surfeit of modifiers. The wolf has “intelligent eyes,” a “magnificent head” and “muscular ears nimbly twitching.” Hyde’s oil paintings are beautiful in a soft-focus kind of way, although they reflect a more High Renaissance style than Francis’ late-12th-century boyhood. Full-page images are bordered with leaves, flowers and geometric patterns, and the palette is ash rose, stone and gold. Nobisso’s dedication is in Italian, to her aunts and cousins, and while the few Italian words in the text are fairly clear, it is too bad she does not note that Nonna is Grandma and Babbo is Daddy.
Heartfelt, if florid. (creators’ note, author’s postscript) (Picture book/religion. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-940112-20-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gingerbread House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Two rival Academies in the town of Beastieville counterintuitively offer either training in good manners for the already-virtuous or a bad-behavior curriculum tailored to students who “pester, pinch, and push, / who sniffle in their snot.” Unsurprisingly, it’s the University of Vile that takes center stage in this import, as variously hairy, blobby, garishly colored cartoon monsters crowd through the doors for encouragement in disruption (“It’s vital in the classroom to be messy, loud, and spiteful. / ‘More volume, class,’ the teacher calls. / ‘A racket is delightful’ ”). Then two Viles fall into a deep hole, and have to help each other to get out. They’re summarily expelled, of course, and a page turn later have been transformed into little angels (more or less) through instruction in making “right choices every day” at the other school. Though not really “cautionary” in the Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls sense, this does offer some memorable lines (“Even if I haven’t picked the right school, I’ll have picked the right nostril”) and acting out to counter the bland modeling more common in standard manner manuals. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7459-6254-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lion/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
Kingsbury, a prolific author of Christian novels for adults, offers a story for younger readers about a courageous knight who competes to become prince of his homeland and heir to the throne. The competition pits four knights from different villages against one another as they face three challenges to test their speed, strength and intelligence. The dark-haired knight from the west village is introduced as a kind, hard-working young man who practices all these skills prior to the competition. His father encourages him along the way with comforting messages about God’s support. During the challenges each of the other knights cheats in some way to gain an unfair advantage, so the king chooses the deserving knight from the west village as the winner of the contest. The story is wildly predictable and not particularly interesting, although the methods of cheating are inventive. The biggest drawback to the text is the lack of individual names for the knights, who are identified only by their village’s direction, which leads to many repetitions of “the knight from the west village.” Grimard’s pleasant illustrations show a medieval world of castles, ornate costumes and flying banners. She depicts the winning knight as a serious young man who smiles only twice in the story, when he is carrying a little disabled boy who can’t walk properly. Earnest, but that's probably not enough to captivate readers. (Picture book/religion. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-310-71645-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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