Based on the title, readers might expect a book of gross humor. Instead they'll find a sweet story of friendship and competition in which everyone can be “best of the forest.”
Woodchuck Chuck is an artist working in wood and the winner of the Best of the Forest art contest three years running. Then Scooter the possum shows up. When his painting Splatter Matters wins first prize, Chuck is angry and jealous, and he begins to doubt his own abilities. Each of the eight short chapters begins with a full-page illustration that, with the chapter heading, hints at what is to come. Pictures throughout break up the text so new readers will not be intimidated. Chuck's friends provide kid-level comic relief with knock-knock jokes. (Though adults may chuckle at Scooter's similarities to Jackson Pollock and the allusion to current grass-roots movements, these references will mean nothing to beginning readers.) With wisdom beyond their years, Chuck's forest friends counsel him to gracefully accept his second-place recognition, and he rather quickly realizes that “awards are just whipped cream on a sweet-potato pie.” The final chapter, “Lesson Learned,” guarantees that no kid can miss the message.
It’s a kindhearted beginning chapter book, but second-graders may wish it had some vomit jokes . (Early reader. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58089-698-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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