Sunny scenes featuring dot-eyed, shiny-surfaced zoo animals give this otherwise ill-conceived outing visual polish, at least. In a plot that will warm the cockles of anti-unionist hearts, the animals declare a strike—“ ‘We’re paid only peanuts!’ the elephants shout. / ‘And goodness, we’re bigger than that.’ / So now they won’t trumpet or lumber about. / They sit in the shade, looking fat.” A weeping child shames them into going back to work, whereupon they realize that “they actually like what they do.” Intentionally or not, an even clearer message emerges as the zookeeper, supposedly “doing the best that he can,” offers the elephants pecans and a shorter work day, but those ungrateful monkeys complain that the water in their small new kiddy pool is cold, and the zebras stubbornly reject the proffered oats, demanding the right to choose their own feed. Young readers will not only stumble over the text’s markedly irregular metrics, they are also likely to wonder how animals on strike are different from those on the job, as standing or sitting idly about is what real zoo residents usually do anyway. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-057502-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure.
It’s not truffles but doubloons that tickle this porcine wayfarer’s fancy.
Funke and Meyer make another foray into chapter-book fare after Emma and the Blue Genie (2014). Here, mariner Stout Sam and deckhand Pip eke out a comfortable existence on Butterfly Island ferrying cargo to and fro. Life is good, but it takes an unexpected turn when a barrel washes ashore containing a pig with a skull-and-crossbones pendant around her neck. It soon becomes clear that this little piggy, dubbed Julie, has the ability to sniff out treasure—lots of it—in the sea. The duo is pleased with her skills, but pride goeth before the hog. Stout Sam hands out some baubles to the local children, and his largess attracts the unwanted attention of Barracuda Bill and his nasty minions. Now they’ve pignapped Julie, and it’s up to the intrepid sailors to save the porker and their own bacon. The succinct word count meets the needs of kids looking for early adventure fare. The tale is slight, bouncy, and amusing, though Julie is never the piratical buccaneer the book’s cover seems to suggest. Meanwhile, Meyer’s cheery watercolors are as comfortable diagramming the different parts of a pirate vessel as they are rendering the dread pirate captain himself.
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure. (Adventure. 7-9)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37544-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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