Gooney Bird doesn't need much help putting herself on the map. She'll be famous for years to come.
Feisty and full of ideas (as always), Gooney Bird Greene is back.
It is now February in Mrs. Pidgeon’s second-grade classroom. There are valentines to be made and presidential birthdays to be celebrated (Gooney Bird makes sure no one forgets poor William Henry Harrison, even if he was only president for one month). But hearts and U.S. history pale in comparison to what is on every kid’s mind: school vacation. The children squirm excitedly and can’t stop chattering about surfing in Hawaii or snowboarding in Vermont. However, exactly 12 minus three of them (Mrs. Pidgeon can sneak a math problem in anywhere) do not have any exciting travel plans at all. They are glum. Luckily, Gooney Bird has an outlandishly fabulous idea—they will build a map of the entire United States outside in the snow on the playground. All of this geography talk can’t go to waste! The true-to-life voices and a multitude of personalities make it easy for readers to step into Mrs. Pidgeon’s class and feel right at home.
Gooney Bird doesn't need much help putting herself on the map. She'll be famous for years to come. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-55622-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Pretty. Pretty forgettable too.
An abbreviated if recognizable version of the classic, with fine-lined illustrations augmented by a set of pull-up minivistas.
Safran’s adaptation preserves the original’s general structure and bits of the dialogue and verse, though Alice’s encounters with a hookah-smoking caterpillar, “Father William,” the Lobster Quadrille, the Mock Turtle, and much else are gone. Taylor illustrates it with spot vignettes, plus an inset cover tableau and four pop-up constructs that pull open to raise and reveal multilayered scenes. Into these, Taylor places small renditions of the chubby White Rabbit, a cross-eyed Mad Hatter, and the rest in static poses while outfitting Alice in pink ballet slippers and a flow-y, sleeveless polka-dot shift. The effect is decidedly bland. Children after more flavorful takes on the tale, particularly those spiced with 3-D or other special effects, have a veritable banquet before them—from J. Otto Siebold’s quirky Alice in Pop-Up Wonderland (2003) and Robert Sabuda’s masterwork of paper engineering (2003) to the spectacular e-outings Alicewinks (2013) and Alice for the iPad (2010).
Pretty. Pretty forgettable too. (Pop-up picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-85707-814-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Tango Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
That it’s the “best-known and best-loved bridge in the world” is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs a...
Gray bridges abound, but there’s only one major one that’s orange—and here’s how that happened.
Striving for whimsy when he’s not being patronizing—“It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind, for they are inanimate objects”—Eggers tracks the building of the Golden Gate Bridge from rejected design proposals (“It was functional, but it was grotesque”) on. Along with giving the bridge’s innovative features a light once-over, he introduces the project’s three main architects. One had designed the Manhattan Bridge, “believed to be in or near New York City,” as Eggers coyly puts it; another led the populist campaign to keep the finished structure the International Orange with which its prefabricated steel parts were (and still are) coated because it “somehow looked right.” Whether young readers will find these observations, or such lines as, “Sometimes the things humans make baffle even the humans who make them,” illuminating is anybody’s guess. In broad collages assembled from large pieces of cut paper, Nichols illustrates the enterprise with stylized portrait heads and abstract views of golden hills set against blue (or sometimes gray) expanses of sea and sky. The finished bridge poses grandly in several.
That it’s the “best-known and best-loved bridge in the world” is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs a self-conscious, 104-page picture book to draw attention to it. (jacket poster) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940450-47-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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