Readers will have to suspend some realities of the animal kingdom, but may still enjoy this somewhat charming look at nature.
A duck encounters a sly, determined fox in a marsh setting.
On vividly illustrated pages, readers follow a duck through his day, gliding through the reeds, feasting on weeds and relishing the sun–with happy insects completing the idyllic scene. Lurking in the background, however, is a red fox waiting to surprise his unsuspecting prey. The duck doesn’t notice his predator at first, focusing instead on a beautiful butterfly, but soon sees the overbearing fox and his menacing sharp teeth. The fox takes aim and lands on the duck’s back–the resulting flurry of feathers begins to choke the fox, who begs the duck for help. Seeing a way out of his dilemma, the wise duck thwacks the fox’s head and back, clearing his throat. The fox then lets the duck go his way–hence the book’s title. Autumn arrives in a riot of colors, and the duck sees a V-shaped group of his brethren flying above. He spreads his wings, joins the troop and heads south. After the cold winter, duck returns to the marsh and is swimming with some baby ducks when he notices fox, still up to his scheming tricks. The fox’s target this time is a duckling–the duck saves the small bird by landing on the fox’s back and forcing him to let go. After a reprimand, the fox agrees to leave the ducklings alone. Weis draws on her rural childhood experience and her current Wisconsin home when she crafted this naturalistic tale. Still, some of her rhyming verse may be too mature for the children likely to be this book’s target audience, both in content and structure. Still, the text pairs well with the occasionally awkward illustrations and keeps the narrative moving at a comfortable pace. The animal characters and colorful pictures will have young children interested whether reading in a classroom setting or at home.
Readers will have to suspend some realities of the animal kingdom, but may still enjoy this somewhat charming look at nature.Pub Date: July 28, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9726-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-525-44672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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