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Cotter Otter in Treasure Water

Name: Cotter Otter in Treasure Water
Author: Kennedy Bleu
ISBN: 978-1634481465

by Kennedy Bleu ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2014

An enjoyable, visually appealing story that needs to clean up its telling.

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Cotter Otter turns down different sea creatures who want to play pirates, until a storm leads them to work—and play—together.

Debut author Bleu teams with experienced illustrator Goembel (Animal Fair, 2012, etc.), whose playful illustrations portray a watery world and characters young readers will enjoy. Unfortunately, the otherwise well-plotted story has a clunky rhythm and ragged rhyme scheme that not only trips the tongue but sometimes waylays meaning. Take, for instance, the first stanza: “Cotter Otter in treasure water / with his sword held high and just the right look, / feels bold as a pirate captain with a seaweed hook.” The corresponding illustration shows only some of those details (i.e., not the seaweed hook). When a stingray asks to join the pirate game, Cotter humorously answers, “Cay Ray, your body is so flat. / You couldn’t wear a pirate hat.” Yet the refrain doesn’t quite roll off the tongue: “We are very different, can’t you see? / Playing together seems ridiculous to me.” When Cotter meets Brad Crab, he rejects him for his hurt legs. Then the otter meets a whale who volunteers to be pirate captain. “Gail whale, you are too big for a pirate ship. / If you came on board, it would surely tip!” Just as Cotter swims by a sunken pirate ship, wishing he could find mates, the water swirls and shakes—an avalanche traps the creatures underwater. “Cotter Otter can hardly see, as Gail Whale shouts, ‘We need air to breathe!’ ” Gail is also tangled in rope, which Cotter has Brad cut with his claws. Too often, though, characters’ emotions are told rather than shown, sometimes while stretching for a rhyme: “Cotter…starts to scream and pout, as rocks keep crashing causing fear and doubt.” With Gail urging them to work together, Cotter suggests the thin ray might slip through a hole in the rocks. She returns with a fleet of determined-looking stingrays, who shovel the rocks away. They all shoot to the surface for a welcome breath. The final spread shows four friends playing pirates together, the whale being the ship. Perhaps telling the story in prose, using just the right words, would have better served its child-appropriate theme and inviting illustrations.

An enjoyable, visually appealing story that needs to clean up its telling.

Pub Date: July 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-1634481465

Page Count: 24

Publisher: America Star Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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ABIYOYO RETURNS

by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by Michael Hays ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2001

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The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-689-83271-0

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DEAF MUSICIANS
by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

- BOOK REVIEW
SOME FRIENDS TO FEED
by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by Michael Hays

- BOOK REVIEW
TURN! TURN! TURN!
adapted by Pete Seeger & illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin

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CORALINE

by Neil Gaiman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...

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A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.

Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.

Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)