Spirited and often exciting, if a little ragged.
When the weather gets rough, Grandma takes the helm.
The clanging of the bell buoy indicates choppy water, but that doesn't deter Grandma from her planned adventure with Little Billy. It's Labor Day, so she has the day off. (Most every other day she's running her trash-hauling/snowplow business.) She and Billy are going to relax in the lobsterboat while her son Bill (who has a wee problem with seasickness) tends to the catch. A thick fog rolls in just as it's time to head back. But Bill is weak-kneed in the stern of the lobsterboat, and Billy can't raise uncles Buster or Burt by phone. There's only one thing to do: With Little Billy as her eyes, Grandma takes the helm. It's a heart-stopping ride, swerving past the buoy and veering away from the rocks that support the lighthouse. Thanks to Grandma and Little Billy, the Labor Day lobster bake is a great success, and she rewards him with the biggest lobster he's ever seen. Clark's text is ample, and, while giving empowerment to senior citizens, the tone is consistently tongue-in-cheek. Many of Huntington's seascapes benefit by filling two wide pages. Some readers will wonder at plot holes, including the fact that savvy Grandma relies on her seasick son in the first place.
Spirited and often exciting, if a little ragged. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60893-004-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Down East Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Pretty, though as condensations go, less Wonder-full than Robert Sabuda’s pop-up Alice (2003) or the digital Alicewinks...
A much-abridged version of the classic’s first five chapters, dressed up with large and properly surreal illustrations.
Rhatigan and Nurnberg retain “Curiouser and curiouser!” and other select bits of the original while recasting the narrative in various sizes of type and a modern-sounding idiom: “Tiny Alice needed something special to eat to get back to her regular girl size.” They take Carroll’s bemused young explorer past initial ups and downs and her encounter with a certain (here, nonsmoking) Blue Caterpillar. Looking more to Disney than Tenniel, Puybaret casts Alice as a slender figure with flyaway corn-silk hair and big, blue, widely spaced eyes posing with balletic grace against broadly airbrushed backdrops. Leafless trees and barren hills give Wonderland an open, autumnal look. The odd vegetation adds an otherworldly tone, and compact houses and residents from the White Rabbit and the Dodo to occasional troupes of mice or other small creatures in circus dress are depicted with precise, lapidary polish. A marginally relevant endpaper map (partly blocked by the flaps) leads down the River of Tears, past a turnoff for a Bathroom and on toward “the Tea Party.”
Pretty, though as condensations go, less Wonder-full than Robert Sabuda’s pop-up Alice (2003) or the digital Alicewinks (2013). (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62354-049-4
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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