This year's Newbery winner returns to her popular comic mode—now with a third book about the Tates of N.Y.C.'s West 83rd Street (Switcharound, 1985). At 13, J.P. is more interested in chess than gifts until golden-haired Angela joins his class, and (to his own disgust) J.P. bursts into an interior monologue of admiring clichés ("teeth like pearls"). No problem—Angela likes him, too—but, in a moment of weakness, J.P. tells her that he has a rare, fatal disease ("triple framosis"); while the lie wins him sympathy, maintaining it results in complications. Meanwhile, the two team up for the "Spring Fling," dressing as golf bags; and by the time J.P. manages to win the day's chess tournament—despite his uncomfortably restrictive garb—he's learned that chess rival Hope is his truer friend. Like Byars' Bingo Brown, J.P. is a thoroughly likable, realistically self-absorbed, bright boy whose escapades and soul-searching provide insights as well as laughter. Here, Ralph—an old man J.P. meets who challenges him to an alphabetical competition of ailments—provides an amusing vehicle for a more serious subtext as J.P. matches his adolescent acne and body odor against Ralph's alopecia, bursitis, and cataracts. Later, it's Ralph who helps J.P. decide that the character flaws that worry J.P. should be taken in hand early. A memorably funny book.
Pub Date: April 30, 1990
ISBN: 0395536391
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1990
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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SEEN & HEARD
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