Parenting skills come in handy even for immense, green, fire-breathing monsters.
A little kaiju yearns to join its mom in saving Earth and other good deeds.
It seems the narrator’s mom at one time was “a little…wild” (“Where did you even find that?” she exclaims, rolling her eyes at a collection of clippings with headlines like “GARGANTUA STRIKES AGAIN”). But now she helps out by resetting knocked-over buildings, tickling rampaging space robots into acquiescence, and blasting the occasional giant asteroid before it hits with her fiery atomic breath. “I want to grow up to be just like my mom,” proclaims the cute little narrator—who chafes at being allowed to cheer her exploits only from a distance. The diminutive lizard-monster therefore determinedly sets out to prove that it’s not a baby any more. Fortunately, Mom comes through in the clutch. After saving her overly ambitious mite from being smooshed beneath the condemned skyscraper it manages to knock down, instead of meting out punishment she cannily suggests that maybe they should work together from then on. “And that’s just what we do,” the dinky dino concludes, adding a pint-sized blast to its mom’s roaring exhalation. Only carping critics will complain that Sylvester models his round-headed narrator and its smiling, much bigger single parent more on Godzilla and Godzilla Jr. than the Gargantua of film in his cartoon pictures. They are missing out on terrific fun.
Parenting skills come in handy even for immense, green, fire-breathing monsters. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77306-182-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
An intriguing concept waylaid by snark.
This collaboration pairs compelling vintage photographs of children, chosen from Radunsky’s extensive collection, with Raschka’s 26 flippant, three-line verses.
The late-19th- and early-20th-century photographs capture images of children dressed in their best costumes and shoes, formally posed in photographers’ studios. Radunsky’s elegant, child-friendly afterword explains that the expense of photographic images caused families to reserve them only for special occasions. Inviting speculation that these children “could have been our great-great-great-grandparents,” he suggests that the photos offer “an extraordinary chance to see what our great-great-great-grandparents looked like when they were children.” Raschka’s alliterative triplets (arranged alphabetically by the invented names of the pictured children) aim to amuse but clank more than they click. The verses contrive characteristics and emotions for the arbitrarily named children, seeming distinctly out of step with Radunsky’s respectful, historically grounded approach. At “G,” Raschka writes: “Gifted Glenda Grace / Glows gorgeously with a grin / Half as wide as her face.” In the image, a toddler in a fancy dress and big hair bow (both tinted pink) leans against a low table, her hands on an open book. Wide-eyed, she displays a tentative half-smile, more Mona Lisa than Minnie Mouse. The poems not only intentionally sidestep the cultural identities of the depicted children (mostly West European and white), but employ ill-advised terms like “manhandles” and “unmans” in poems about “Merry Margo Maxine” and “Uppity Ursula Uma.”
An intriguing concept waylaid by snark. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59017-817-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
A little boy adjusts to changes as his beloved grandmother ages and becomes infirm.
Oscar loves his grandma, and he loves the things they do together, like riding on their scooters and playing on the seesaw. When she “doesn’t feel like playing,” they find other ways to enjoy each other’s company. But now there are many things she can no longer do, and she must move to a place where she will be cared for. Oscar, his dad and his younger sibling visit Grandma, meeting her caregivers and other residents. Sometimes Grandma shouts and gets angry when she cannot remember things, but other times she tells Oscar stories about her life. The sweet, squiggly pictures show that Grandma visited Paris, went camping and jumped out of an airplane (with a parachute but without a helmet). Oscar is clear about how the changes in Grandma upset him, but he says that friends and family take care of him and make him feel better. Notes at the end give more details about dementia. Oscar’s voice is naïve and prone to inexactitude, and the tale overall is very purposive, clearly created to help other children in Oscar’s situation. Though it lacks the artistry of Mem Fox and Julie Viva’s Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge (1989), it has a useful charm. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84643-602-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Child's Play
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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