If you lived on Shipshape Street in a town called Neatasapin, you might want a very untidy bunny for a pet too. A bunny is what Emmaline wants, and she wants it “most mostly.” Mayor Orson Oliphant, however, has banned all potential mess-makers, including bunnies, spaghetti, jelly doughnuts and even trees (he calls them “leaf litterers”). He would banish the puddle-splashing, dirt-digging, “scoot-skedaddling” Emmaline if he could get away with it. When Emmaline’s hankering for a furry friend becomes downright painful, her parents finally agree to defy the mayor, un-pave their yard and create a suitably lush habitat to lure their daughter’s longed-for bunny from the wilds of nearby Untidy. With playful, alliterative, fun-to-read-aloud language (“Whackadoodlewhipperpoo,” for example) and its fantastical storyline, this winning, 32-chapter novelette recalls the magical whimsy of Roald Dahl. The author’s winsome watercolors lend an ethereal quality to this sweet, funny story that respectfully maps the warrens of a child’s psyche as it celebrates the glorious mess that is nature. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-162654-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
A gentle paean to friendship most suitable for that perfect friend.
A heartfelt “thank you” to a special friend.
Speaking in the first person and addressing an unidentified friend as “you,” the author begins this little tribute by expressing appreciation for all the friend is and does. Assuring the friend that “where you are, things are brighter,” the author adds, “you’re a gem, you’re a peach, you’re a wonderful friend.” Admitting it’s hard to find the right words (even in a “giant…dictionary”), the author asserts the friend is “gooder than good” and “kinder than kind,” and there’s just no way to describe the friend’s inner light and spirit. Indeed, knowing this friend is part of the author’s life “makes even the rainy days feel more alright.” Present on all the author’s “brightest days,” the friend has clearly made “more than a little” difference in the author’s life. The rhyming text adds quiet cadence to this somewhat abstract ode to friendship while precise, small-scale illustrations, rendered in pale tans and greens, provide a visual context featuring a fox and a squirrel wearing old-fashioned shirts and knickers. Each page turn reveals the two friends together: kite-flying, picnicking, gathering honey, fishing, catching fireflies, drinking tea, sheltering under a toadstool, dancing, hopping across lily pads, cycling, swinging, star-gazing, sleeping in hammocks, and sharing all their brightest days surrounded by delicate botanicals.
A gentle paean to friendship most suitable for that perfect friend. (Picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-970147-44-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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