It's a bruiser that could be an eye-opener, could be a fright. . . you wouldn't want to hand it out wholesale.
Anti-war games.
James and Timothy and Stanley and Bert split up companionably into good guys and bad guys in their daily sorties to capture the hill, wind up spread-eagled (""They all lay dead"") and still friends. Then "One day" . . . Big Mike, a black-clad menace, and his scowling crew challenge them to fight for their right to the hill. Slinging stones and swinging clubs, they bloody and maul one another. . . until "They all lay hurting" and decide that "Nobody won. . . We all lost. . . Why don't we just use (the hill) together?" There'll be no more "real war" just "Bang, Bang, You're Dead." A terse text lets the intense, eruptive drawings carry most of the impact. Clutching their wounds, these kids might be Goya's Desastres de la Guerra scaled to size.
It's a bruiser that could be an eye-opener, could be a fright. . . you wouldn't want to hand it out wholesale.Pub Date: May 7, 1969
ISBN: 978-0-06-443115-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969
An amusing if slight addition to beach reading.
Lizzie’s companion is a big, blue inflatable seal named Lou.
The water toy is bigger than the impish, little white girl, but Lizzie manages to carry and drag Lou Seal out of the family’s beach trailer down to the shore. There’s one problem: the seal has lost its “puff.” Lizzie never noticed that the animal has been pierced by a sharp piece of wood. She was busy pulling her polka-dot flip-flop, named Dottie One, off a wad of gum stuck to the boardwalk. As Lizzie pulls Lou Seal along, other items puncture her exterior: “Purple shells! Seaglass! Starfish!” When Lizzie is ready to swim, the toy looks deflated, but the resilient girl knows what to do. She drags the toy back to the trailer, discovers holes, patches them with stickers, and blows Lou Seal up. Since she has lost Dottie Two in the sea, she finds her flippers and carries the seal back to the waves, proudly showing off their matching accessories. Lizzie’s independence is refreshing, but some readers will note the absence of an adult supervising swimming in such heavy surf. Mixed-media pictures are at their most exciting when painterly waves crash against the shore, and onomatopoeic words in display type (“step thwack” when Lizzie has only one flip-flop, and “scooch scooch scooch” as Lou Seal travels through the sand) add to the fun in reading aloud.
An amusing if slight addition to beach reading. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0630-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back.
Alex’s ability to talk with ghosts puts him in famous company when he and his mom move to Hannibal, Missouri.
Alex, 13, is driven by bitter determination to keep his lifelong ability secret, since it’s already led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia that drove his parents apart and cost his mother a decent job, but it’s not easy. For one thing, his new friend, Bones, is a positively obsessed amateur ghost hunter, and for another, ghosts just won’t leave him alone no matter how rudely he treats them. Notable among the latter is Mark Twain himself, as acerbic and wily as he was in life, who is on the verge of involuntarily degenerating into a raging poltergeist unless Alex can find the unspecified, titular treasure. Alex’s search takes him through Clemens’ writings and tragic private life as well as many of the town’s related attractions on the way to a fiery climax in the public library. Meanwhile, Alex has an apotheosis of his own, deciding that lying to conceal his ability and his unhappy past isn’t worth the sacrifice of a valued friendship. Conveniently for the plot’s needs, Clemens and other ghosts can interact with the physical world at will. Wolfe parlays Alex’s ingrained inability to ignore ectoplasmic accosters into some amusing cross-conversations that help lighten his protagonist’s hard inner tests. The cast, living and otherwise, presents as white.
A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940924-29-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Dreaming Robot
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
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