Abigail Iris is just as happy-go-lucky as she was in the series opener, Abigail Iris: The One and Only (2009). This chapter-book text lilts along like the first, frequently accompanied by Allen’s cozy sketches. Her parents, one sister and two half-brothers lovingly nurture Abigail Iris, who is sweet natured and somewhat young for eight. One day at the farmer’s market, she holds a black kitten and falls in love. She’s joyful when her half-birthday arrives along with the fluffy little feline she dubs Spot. Sadly, the family soon determines that Abigail Iris’s older sister’s tenacious cold is actually an allergy to the cat. While they consider their options, Abigail Iris notices that many people in her life are facing huge changes: Her half-brother has a girlfriend, but his beloved dog is dying of old age, and her friend is nervous about a new sibling on the horizon. Circumstances eventually allow for her family to make arrangements that, though difficult, are good enough. In the philosophical Abigail Iris, Glatt and Greenberg give readers a role model for adaptation and compromise. (Fiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8027-8657-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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