For girls who love glittery nail polish and their friends and who hope to make the world a better place.
The bubbly girls of Lotus Lane are back.
Meet Kiki, budding fashionista; Lulu, the girl with movie-star knowledge and plenty of plans; new neighbor Mika; and last, but not least, Coco: future ecologist, animal lover, gardening expert, member of a large Italian family and cupcake baker extraordinaire. Told through Coco’s point of view in a diary format that includes drawings, lists, quotes, texts and recipes, the rather disjointed plot is focused on the girls’ plan to raise money through a cupcake sale to make a garden home for some endangered snails Coco’s scientist father is rescuing. Meanwhile, an unfortunate string of events occurs, and Coco suspects that a homeless black kitten may be to blame. Eventually, everything falls into place. The kitten is proven innocent and finds a home, Coco’s friendship with Mika deepens, and some local snails have a new garden at school. Though the minimal character development, thin plot and excessive use of exclamation points may put off some readers, and those new to chapter books may have a hard time with the diary format, this selection has more depth than the first in the series and possesses the same trendiness and warmth.
For girls who love glittery nail polish and their friends and who hope to make the world a better place. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-49615-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises.
Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.
Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-30935-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably...
A lad finds a penguin on his doorstep and resolutely sets out to return it in this briefly told import.
Eventually, he ends up rowing it all the way back to Antarctica, braving waves and storms, filling in the time by telling it stories. But then, feeling lonely after he drops his silent charge off, he belatedly realizes that it was probably lonely too, and turns back to find it. Seeing Jeffers’s small, distant figures in wide, simply brushed land- and sea-scapes, young viewers will probably cotton to the penguin’s feelings before the boy himself does—but all’s well that ends well, and the reunited companions are last seen adrift together in the wide blue sea.
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably with this—slightly—less offbeat friendship tale. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24503-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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