Readers will melt.
A witch confronts her greatest fear: helpful human children in perky uniforms.
Green-skinned and with a big pointy hat cocked stylishly over her one huge eye, the Cyclops Witch fearlessly takes on winged monkeys and other creatures—but when a diverse quartet of smiling young scouts appears on her porch one night, she “blitzed out her back window, running like mad. / ‘Gah! Children!’ she shrieked. ‘This is so very bad!’ ” Undeterred by her efforts to leave them in the clutches of a mothman, a vampire, or even a sea monster (“What a world!” she moans), her pursuers at last catch up and introduce themselves as Heebie-Jeebies Maria, Germaine, Hector, and Latasha: “We travel the world, over mountain, sea and prairie, / to help others overcome the things they find scary.” Instantly cured, the witch helps the winged monkeys get over their fear of water and other good deeds, thus earning a sash and tiara of her very own. The meter and rhyme may be, to say the least, undisciplined (“Maria helped the hobgoblin be cool around fire, / and with Germaine’s help, exercising’s fun for Vampire”), but, cribbing freely from a certain classic movie, the Sullivan twins dish up a yarn replete with cute monsters, cuter children, an unusually memorable protagonist, and buckets of fluffy uplift.
Readers will melt. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948931-00-7
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Hazy Dell Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
An awesome-tastic invitation to have or share thoughts about bad and better choices.
Actor Tatum’s effervescent heroine steals a friend’s toy and then lies about it.
Thrilled about an upcoming play date with new classmate Wyatt, Sparkella considers her own sparkly stuffies, games, and accessories and silently decides that he’d be more interested in her friend Tam’s remote-controlled minicar. While she and Tam are playing together, Sparkella takes the car when Tam isn’t looking. Tam melts down at school the next day, and Sparkella, seeing her “bestest friend” losing her sparkle, feels “icky, oogy, and blech.” And when Wyatt comes over, he turns out to be far more entranced by glittery goods than some old car. When Sparkella yells at him—“WYATT, YOU HAVE TO PLAY WITH THIS CAR RIGHT NOW!”—her dad overhears and asks where the toy came from…and along with being a thief, Sparkella turns out to be the worst. Liar. Ever. She eventually confesses (her dad forgives her), apologizes (ditto Wyatt and even Tam), and goes on to take part in a three-way play date/sparklefest. Her absolution may come with unlikely ease, but it’s comfortingly reassuring, and her model single dad does lay down a solid parental foundation by allowing that everyone makes mistakes and stressing that she is “never going to be punished for telling the truth in this house.” He and Sparkella present White, a previous entry cued brown-skinned Tam as Asian, and Wyatt has brown skin in Barnes’ candy-hued pictures. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An awesome-tastic invitation to have or share thoughts about bad and better choices. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781250750778
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The boy-and-beetle friendship first introduced in Broach’s charming novel Masterpiece (2010) is now the cornerstone of an illustrated chapter-book series.
James is a boy, and Marvin is a beetle, but with the help of Marvin’s drawing skills, they find a way to communicate. James’ mom worries that her son’s best friend is an insect, but tiny Marvin has the opposite worry—that James will find human friends who supplant him. When James takes off on a beach vacation, Marvin frets even more, but he manages to have a few adventures of his own, like getting trapped inside Mr. Pompaday’s electric pencil sharpener with his beetle cousin Elaine. At first it’s entertaining to frolic among the shavings, but when an unanticipated pencil clogs the exit hole, there’s big trouble. Murphy clearly revels in the Borrowers-style perspective of the beetles’ miniature world: In their under-sink home, Marvin’s drawing table is a die, and a propped-up birthday-cake candle dwarfs the family. The dramatic, blow-by-blow pencil-sharpener incident dominates the story, but it circles back to friendship. James really did miss Marvin after all, and a souvenir seashell (the perfect beetle hideout!) seals the deal. This winsome series debut is both a sweet story of cross-species friendship and a sobering new way to look at pencil sharpeners. (Fantasy. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9190-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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