Reporting in verse on his world-spanning travels, naturalist B.B. Barnswhitten sets out in search of 14 rarely (or never) seen creatures from the golden toad to the Loch Ness Monster. He has no success, but sharp-eyed readers will, as Filippucci hides animals and animal shapes in each lushly detailed land- or seascape’s rocks, clouds and foliage. Irritatingly for adults and confusingly for children, the still-extant creatures aren’t distinguished from the extinct and imaginary ones until a set of profiles at the end, which provides basic information on habitat, description, behavior, diet and status (extinct, endangered, nonexistent). The light, tongue-in-cheek presentation is at war with such grim entries as the Steller’s Sea Cow’s: “Extinct, 1768 (only 27 years after being discovered by Steller), due to overhunting for meat and oil.” Though the poet sometimes labors—“I searched the night jungle, / I looked high and low, / For the curious parrot, / The strange kakapo…”—fans of Graeme Base’s Water Hole (2001) and its ilk will enjoy playing “spot the beastie,” as long as they aren’t in it for the information. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58536-433-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An exotic menagerie fenced in by design flubs and an anemic plotline.
Creatures step out of a bestiary in this tie-in to a manuscript exhibit at the Getty Museum.
The cheery if surreal episode features a young castle worker who swipes an unfinished bestiary and dreams of nonviolent knightly encounters with a lion, unicorn, dragon, and other mighty beasts of yore—somehow failing to notice until the end that his supposed foes have swirled out of the pages to feed the chickens, spread straw, light a fire, and finish the rest of his assigned tasks. Lee places richly hued, friendly looking versions of the creatures into bland castle-yard settings and adds a wizard-ish artist who watches and ultimately draws the animals back into their book. Readers may wonder if there’s a leaf missing partway through, where two very different full-page illustrations collide at the gutter. Further confusion will likely follow as the captions to a set of images from actual bestiaries at the end (following an inconspicuous cautionary note) present fancy as factoid: Lions “are afraid of fire and the sight of a white rooster”; a “dog that crosses a hyena’s shadow will lose its voice.” Even a chimeric bonnacon, which “attacks by expelling a fiery dung that can travel as far as two acres, burning anything it touches,” can’t quite redeem this artless outing. Save for the Asian-presenting wizard/artist, the human cast is white.
An exotic menagerie fenced in by design flubs and an anemic plotline. (appendix) (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947440-04-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Getty Publications
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
This gorgeously illustrated, inventive book is sure to entrance young readers.
Creatures from mythology break the fourth wall (or page) in this surrealistic guide by author/illustrator Molinet.
A young reader, carrying crumb cake, milk, and the same book readers hold, begins to flip through the pages of the book. On the left page of each spread, a mythological creature, introduced by a rhyming couplet, responds to the actions of the reader, who is shown reading the book and variously spilling crumbs and milk and coloring on or accidentally ripping the pages. The book takes mistreatment from the reader—but also from the very active mythological creatures. The dwarves, for example, dig a hole right through their opposing page. Featuring the book itself in the illustrations creates a delightful fun-house effect. The child, pale-skinned and blond, looks to be a first or second grader, and the vocabulary is appropriate for readers of that age. The beautiful, painterly illustrations and wild tessellated backgrounds offer details for both younger lap readers and older independent ones. Molinet’s rhymes scan unevenly, but it’s the illustrations that will draw readers and keep them turning the pages. An afterword describes the concept of tessellations and offers a longer note on each creature. While older readers may wish Molinet were more specific about the cultural origins he cites (rather than saying “specific to one culture”), Molinet’s stated purpose is to give them enough to start their own research.
This gorgeously illustrated, inventive book is sure to entrance young readers.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73335-480-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Notable Kids Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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