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MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB

Name: MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB
Author: Linda Jennings
ISBN: 1-86233-069-7

by Linda Jennings ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1999

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It all starts rather familiarly: “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.” But when the lamb follows Mary to school, the old story gets a detour. The lamb (a small, woolly finger-puppet attached to the book by a ribbon) peeks through windows and sneaks into classrooms in a effort to be reunited with Mary. Flaps add to the action, as does the finger-puppet (especially because the lamb is not represented in the illustrations for the detour); a super-colossal fold-out page caps the story, allowing the lamb to park on a piece of Velcro and join Mary in class. This is a playground as well as a story, and it certainly is a literal way to get immersed in a book. Hurt-Newton’s artwork is enticing, the paint as thick and rich as frosting. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: June 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-86233-069-7

Page Count: 16

Publisher: Sterling

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CAN YOU HOP?

by Lisa Lawston ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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Hopping is not hard, for a frog, but when he asks other animals to join him, he finds that bats flap, lobsters snap, and dust flies when an especially large rhinoceros stomps. None of the creatures can do what the frog does so well, until he meets a rabbit, and it becomes a friendship bound by bounding. Vere’s creatures are reminiscent of Sandra Boynton’s: smiling, bright, and lively, unrestrained by this board book’s small dimensions. A hopping good time. (Board book. 1-4)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-531-30131-1

Page Count: 22

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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OVERHEAD

by Jack M. Bickham ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 1991

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Tennis pro, Vietnam vet, and intelligence operative Brad Smith, who first served in Dropshot (1990), quits an irritating job in Texas to head for Montana, where his unusual skills are needed to open a new tennis resort and locate a murderous nearby secret agent. Well, whom else would you call to clean out the spies plaguing a mysterious Air Force lab just a backhand away from a troubled tennis camp? The debt-ridden sports resort, just bought by Smith's old tennis and spying pal Ted Treacher, provides the perfect cover for Smith—the only tennis-playing spy in America capable of recognizing his old archenemy Sylvester, the Soviet spy responsible for the death of Smith's late Yugoslavian tennis- playing wife. Sylvester, operating with a completely new face fresh from the plastic surgeon, is in Big Sky country to snatch a bit of strategic-defense technology from the research lab whose powerful secret electromagnetic pulses have been giving the local children leukemia. Also neighboring the resort is a secret toxic- waste dump owned by a beautiful but ruthless capitalist hussy who wants to close down the country club so she can get her toxic wastes back. Smith has to sort out all these secrets while cleaning up the financial and managerial mess his chum has made of what should be a fabulous destination for rich tennis players. Sylvester shoots at him, a sadistic deputy shoots at him, and Ivan Lendl shoots at him. Bodies pop out of the golf course. Credibility crushed in straight sets 6-2, 6-0, 6-1.