This companion to The Boys’ Book (September 2007) gives advice on how to do things from the ridiculous to the sublime. The boy’s version tells how to escape quicksand, build a raft and fly helicopters. The girls’ version teaches them how to do magic tricks, science experiments, garden and solve the popular Sudoku puzzles. They can also learn how to survive alien invasions (follow what movie characters have done), to annoy people in an elevator (meow occasionally), and how to cope after a zombie attack (just avoid getting bitten). This eclectic collection of both useful and silly advice will likely afford plenty of giggles along with handy tips. Illustrations demonstrating specific steps for making kites, doing origami and doing one’s hair in a French braid are clear and concise. A fun book for a rainy day or sleepover even if the topics reinforce gender stereotypes. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-545-01629-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
Come for the mystery, stay for the backmatter.
This gentle, fast-paced mystery will hook readers with interesting details.
Julieta Leal, 9, is a magnet for disasters. She has a reputation at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where both her parents work, for making trouble. Julieta is just trying to help, and it’s not her fault that sometimes things get broken or she has a hard time following the rules. When Julieta’s dad invites her along on a trip to Paris regarding the loan of some pieces from the Louvre, she jumps at the chance to add another purple pin to her family’s world-travel map. She promises to be helpful and stay out of trouble and desperately wants to shed her reputation of being a liability. This proves difficult when the dazzling Regent Diamond is stolen and Julieta and her dad are implicated in the theft. With her dad’s job in peril and the prized gem missing, Julieta must rely on her keen observations and tenacity to clear their names. Detailed descriptions of Paris landmarks and factual information about museum pieces are woven naturally into the fast-moving plot so that readers come away with knowledge of these topics alongside a satisfying story. Several pages of backmatter notes bolster the learning. The endearing Julieta is bilingual, and she and her family are Mexican American.
Come for the mystery, stay for the backmatter. (glossaries) (Mystery. 8-11)Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64379-046-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tu Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Lovingly crafted metafictive silliness both experimental and engaging.
Comedian and actor Ayoade explores storytelling and books themselves.
Readers are quickly introduced to the premise: The narrator of this book…is the book itself. Directly addressing the audience, the narrator waxes philosophical about judging books by covers before plunging readers into a story told in second person about a child who finds “a particular Book That No One Wanted To Read” on a library shelf. Interspersed with imagined, telepathic dialogue between reader and book, this delightfully droll work casually covers everything from footnotes to story structure; information about excess unwanted books being “pulped” by publishers leads to a gag about the book not wanting to be recycled into toilet paper. The design is clean, with different fonts effectively used to maintain speaker clarity, and facts about books blend beautifully with wacky, tongue-in-cheek illustrations. The character “you” is a reader stand-in with a humorous composite depiction (and so lacks race, gender, or any other identity, though other people depicted throughout are diverse in skin tone). In many ways a spiritual successor to B.J. Novak’s The Book With No Pictures (2014), the book (and Book, the character) will encourage readers to approach literature with a sense of play.
Lovingly crafted metafictive silliness both experimental and engaging. (Illustrated fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-2216-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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