Associations aside, a chromatic fantasy full of panache and a clever sense of fun.
A heavenly blue horse introduces a young girl to a land of merriment that finds itself besieged by serpents and Kermudgins.
Turner Flint discovers a rather magical creature among her collection of horse figurines: Glory, guardian of the morning glory vine, a horse that attains the dimensions of a real horse when night comes, and ferries Turner to magical Joya. This land is perfect, “but its seemingly crazy arrangement of beauty was in danger of being straightened.” Winding lanes and serpentine brooks would be chastened by “a terrible tribe of tidy-uppers” called the Kermudgins, currently on a march through Joya. These plug-uglies are greed-heads who like things nice, neat and without smell (though they possess an alarming flatulence of their own), and who, in a pleasing contemporary touch, bear a sound resemblance to your neighborhood developer and his spate of McMansions. Turner and Glory assemble a motley crew of Joyans–Mud-Dog, Rose Falcon, Ole Beaver, Stripe-ed Bees (“What is our bussssinessss of assssissstance?”) and a Pink Cloud–to battle the Kermudgins and the hideous serpent Armanget, spookily captured in one of Lippincott’s two dozen, fine-lined drawings. Chester’s tale displays a good collection of original characters and a disarmingly frank and flawed heroine, as well as a comical fantasyland that, despite its appeal, will make readers think twice about living in a place that values hilarity above all else. Chester maintains just enough menace and hard twists of fate to keep things interesting but not morbid. On the other hand, there are some serious echoes here, loud as church bells, of another land called Oz. In the correspondence of fantasy and real characters at story’s end, the very Munchkin-like Pansies (“Personally, I found them a little bit tiresome,” says Turner) and in the woeful updating of the ruby slippers as a pair of Adidas sneakers.
Associations aside, a chromatic fantasy full of panache and a clever sense of fun.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59543-616-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-525-44672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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