Belciglio and Anderson are back with a new zombie-fighting adventure for Toos (Toos Goes Uptown, 2012).
The rare—and therefore lucky—male calico’s human family, John and Kyle, take him from their home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Chicago with talk of fighting zombies. Chicago native Anderson’s renderings of the Charlotte airport and Chicago cityscape capture the essence of these settings from the cat’s point of view. The chatty text, though overly wordy for a picture book, conveys the feline narrator’s personality and mood. Looking out their hotel window, for instance, Toos comes eye to eye with, not zombies, but pigeons and rambles, “I glared at them….They just sat there! HUH?!?...Charlotte birds would have been scared of me, and flown off. Maybe these pigeons were used to scary zombies and I’m not scary enough!” Anderson’s illustrations, especially the one of Toos having a staring contest with three green-headed pigeons against a backdrop of Chicago skyscrapers, will entrance kids. After psyching himself up to be a scary Zombie-Fighting-Ninja-Cat, Toos is upset to be left in a carrier while John and Kyle go off to fight zombies. He escapes from his cage and comes face to face with a green-faced girl zombie—and runs outside in terror. Young readers will identify with his disappointment in himself: “Zombie-Fighting-Ninja-Cat? Really? More like I was a Scaredy Cat!” But when Toos sees John and Kyle running toward a giant, shiny bean (readers in the know will recognize this iconic sculpture in Millennium Park) with a horde of zombies behind them, he attacks them all, sending them running and yelling. Then he realizes John and Kyle are also yelling—for him to stop—and Chris, the director, yells, “Cut!” Instead of thinking Toos had ruined the movie, though, the director exclaims how real the cat’s attack made it look. The movie wins an award and Toos sums up, “Cool, huh? I’m a movie star. Told you I was lucky!”
Young zombie-crazed readers who discover this happy pairing of dramatic narrative and engaging illustrations will consider themselves lucky as well.
Pub Date: May 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494932787
Page Count: 34
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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