A charming holiday tale with a fine lesson but uneven imagery.
A boy makes a special connection with a pine tree at Christmastime in Wells’ illustrated novella for children.
Seven-year-old Sam Blake and his family live in Maine, just up the road from Albee’s Christmas Tree Farm. He has a special reverence for Christmas, his favorite holiday, and he’s especially excited to pick out a tree after Mrs. Albee advises him that “once a tree becomes a Christmas tree, that tree becomes magical.” As Sam wanders around the lot, he hears a whistle that draws him straight to a white pine that, startlingly, introduces itself as Joseph E.W. Pine. Joseph has recognized Sam as a Tree Person—someone with whom he can communicate and who might understand his loneliness. Because he’s an Eastern white pine, Joseph is never selected for the holiday, so he feels jealous of his neighbors. Even Sam’s family takes a different tree home that day, but Sam doesn’t forget Joseph. He makes a star out of tinfoil on Christmas Eve, venturing out during a burgeoning blizzard to bestow it upon his new friend. The wind and cold almost stop him from achieving his goal; Joseph must summon all his power, and a little Christmas magic, to save the boy and become the tree he was always meant to be. This festive novella is Wells’ newest book since Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou (2024) and his latest for children since Rascal: A Dog and His Boy (2010), and it tells a short but enchanting tale of a pair of unlikely friends. It teaches the key lesson that helping someone in need can have far wider, and more beautiful, consequences than one can imagine. The artwork, credited to U.S. Illustrations, is brightly colored and cartoonlike, but it leaves something to be desired at times; its proportions can be inconsistent, as in one page’s depiction of a very tiny Sam standing with his family.
A charming holiday tale with a fine lesson but uneven imagery.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798266481398
Page Count: 83
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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