A misfit seventh grader’s half-serious conviction that he’s an alien proves well-founded in this wild, slime-and-monster-filled romp from Mackel (A Season Of Comebacks, 1997). The tales Mike spins to a rapt audience of younger neighbors, about hideous reptilian invaders called Jongs, come home to roost when, after a horribly embarrassing computer prank, he constructs a powerful transmitter out of household electronics and beams a plea for help into the night sky. Suddenly, he’s besieged by nonhuman “rescuers,” from a sluglike Bom, eager to open a raft of personal injury suits on Mike’s behalf, to Barnabus, an entity-rights worker from (where else?) Sirius. Thinking better of his original impulse, Mike fends them off until, to his dismay and elation, an actual Jong swoops down, intending to add him and any other convenient beings to its personal zoo. Mike contrives to defeat the Jong and release its menagerie, setting the stage for an unforgettable Halloween parade through town. In the end, despite proof that his stories are actually suppressed memories, Mike elects to stay on Earth with family and friends. Fans of such escapades as Gene De Weese’s Black Suits from Outer Space (1989), Jonathan Etra and Stephanie Spinner’s Aliens For Breakfast (1988) and Mel Gilden’s Pumpkins of Time (1994) will welcome this with open arms, tentacles, and pseudopods. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97681-1
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
Deliberately constructed, Wilson’s wordless picture book makes an adroit and whimsical artistic statement and invites audience participation. On the title page, a child’s hands reach toward a bundle of colored pencils dangling from a branch; the pencils are in bright colors but everything else is sketched in black and white. In careful detail, the child draws a magpie seen on a branch outside the window (perhaps the same branch where the pencils were hung) and when the drawing is completed, the bird flies away from the paper. The child draws cherries, shimmering red on the page, and the bird eats them; the child draws an orange balloon, which the bird pops. Things get a little dangerous when the bird grabs a piece of yellow that sets the page afire and then scribbles blue water that makes a mess. Drawings and events co-determine each other: the child has cages the magpie, the bird grabs the eraser through the bars and escapes the cage, and so it goes, to a last laugh when a claw seizes the pencils and makes a brilliant rainbow of feathers. The only words are the names of the colors, appearing at the end. The realistic drawing style and the use of saturated color on an otherwise black-and-white page are an arresting combination. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8037-2354-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
A very funny little book about a fairy and the family she elects to live with after they confess they believe in her. On a perfectly normal Sunday, as Caroline and her parents are motoring off to the Natural History Museum, a fairy who calls herself Hilary suddenly appears and asks to join them. She joins the family, too, looking like an ordinary child and behaving like one, at least until Caroline coaxes her into a little fairy magic. She gives the family cat, King Arthur, the power to talk, and makes him invisible so he can go to school with the girls. Her magic makes Halloween a little more wondrous, and helps the girls construct the biggest snowman ever. When they’re invited to a birthday party that features a lame magician, Hilary give him a hand, secretly, and he outperforms himself. A dour plane trip turns into a glorious one with Hilary’s aid, while her work in Caroline’s mother’s garden makes other gardeners jealous. In her wonderful frolic, Strauss mingles ordinary events and enchantment with ease; the fun is complemented by charmingly droll black-and-white drawings. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: April 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1418-3
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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