A fetching feline rewards an act of kindness in this fresh rendition of a Japanese folktale. Yohei, a poor boy who sells fish door-to-door, works hard to buy medicine for his sick father. One rainy night a white cat appears at his door. Yohei dries her and shares his meager meal. While Yohei wonders how he can sell fish and still care for his father, villagers start arriving at his home to buy fish saying they followed the white cat who beckoned them with her paw. People come from afar to see Yohei’s cat, and soon his father improves, his business prospers and the beckoning white cat becomes a symbol of good luck in Japan. Naïf illustrations rendered in watercolor, colored pencil and gouache rely on simple, rounded shapes and pastel hues and feature Yohei and his cat in tableaux capturing the bygone innocence of rural Japan. Appropriately, a winsome and wise white cat beckons from various angles and poses, drawing readers from page to page just as she cleverly lures customers to Yohei’s door. A beguiling tale. (Picture book/folktale. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2051-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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