A warm, vibrant read. It would be wonderful to hear more from Piccadilly and her family.
What do fairies like to eat? Follow the charming Piccadilly to the fairy ring and find out.
On the longest day of the year, the fairies throw a huge party and dance—what else?—the polka. Normally, people can’t see fairies, but the extra sunlight on the summer solstice is captured by the dewdrops, “which triggers a speck of summer delight…which inspires the glow of the fairies!” Or so the fairy prince eventually explains to the delighted Piccadilly, a grinning little girl with a round belly and rounder cheeks. One night, she watches her cat, Rufus, stare intently at a circle of overgrown flowers in the backyard. Probably fireflies, her mother says. But Piccadilly hears “fairy flies” and that night dreams of fairies eating cake. So the next day she enlists her brother’s help in baking a batch of cupcakes. She arranges them in a ring in the garden, right where Rufus had been staring, and unwittingly summons the fairy prince. (Or, maybe, as her mother suggests, she was just dreaming under the tree. “I wish my dreams were as fun as yours,” she says.) Piccadilly’s wide-eyed approach to everything in the world—the real world and the fairy world—is absolutely irresistible. She jumps out of bed in the morning, runs to the garden, dances, bakes, charms her family and fearlessly greets a magical creature, without the slightest skepticism. And it’s clear where little Piccadilly learned her open-mindedness: While both Mom and brother smile wryly at Piccadilly’s tales, neither one teases her or tells her she’s mistaken. What a joy to grow up in a house where fairies are welcome and treated to cake. Novelline (The Dance of Spring, 2011) winds out a story that’s complex enough to bear repeated readings. Light’s illustrations are bright and lively, with colors and shapes that evoke old-school animated films like Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. While all the characters are likable and strong, Piccadilly’s cheeks and nose steal the show.
A warm, vibrant read. It would be wonderful to hear more from Piccadilly and her family.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0983531111
Page Count: 52
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
In an imaginative wordless picture book, Wiesner (illustrator of Kite Flyer, 1986) tours a dream world suggested by the books and objects in a boy's room. A series of transitions—linked by a map in the book that the boy was reading as he fell asleep—wafts him, pajama-clad, from an aerial view of hedge-bordered fields to a chessboard with chess pieces, some changing into their realistic counterparts (plus a couple of eerie roundheaded figures based on pawns that reappear throughout); next appear a castle; a mysterious wood in which lurks a huge, whimsical dragon; the interior of a neoclassical palace; and a series of fantastic landscapes that eventually transport the boy back to his own bed. Most interesting here are the visual links Wiesner uses in his journey's evolution; it's fun to trace the many details from page to page. There's a bow to Van Allsburg, and another to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, but Wiesner's broad double-spreads of a dream world—whose muted colors suggest a silent space outside of time—have their own charm. Intriguing.
Pub Date: April 20, 1988
ISBN: 978-0-06-156741-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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