Dog makes it easy to share his passions.
Crockett Johnson’s Harold and Purple Crayon (1955) is a fruitful progenitor, and this descendent gleefully incorporates three distinct visual styles.
Dog’s enthusiasm hasn’t diminished since he opened his bookstore in Dog Loves Books (2010). He leans down from a ladder, handing a book to a customer, then perches atop a stack of books while reading a book with a book open on top of his head. One floppy ear pokes out, and his face shows bliss. The visual style is mild and happy, with black sketched lines deftly conveying emotion and soft colors filling them in. Then a parcel arrives containing a blank sketchbook, and everything changes. Dog draws a door, steps through it and draws a stickman for company in that blank-paged world. Lickety-split, Dog and the stickman are doodle-creating squiggles and more characters (duck, crab, owl). Adventures ensue: train and boat rides, a desert island, a scary monster and a mad dash home. Three aesthetics mingle: the gentle black lines of Dog himself, with his bookstore’s watery colors; a doodling style inside the sketchbook-world, which, though less visually interesting, is sweetly childlike; and a lusciously realistic portrayal of art supplies. Never have pencils, brushes and even a pencil sharpener beckoned so temptingly, from opening endpapers to closing (make sure to check both).
Dog makes it easy to share his passions. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-87067-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
As the sleepy keeper bids him good night, Gorilla snitches his keys; then he creeps after him, letting the other animals out. In a lengthening parade that includes a mouse first seen taking one of Gorilla's bananas, they pad along behind the keeper like faithful dogs, enter his house, and curl up to snooze in his bedroom; Gorilla snuggles into bed next to the keeper's wife. The man is too drowsy to notice, but she does; taking Gorilla by the hand, she leads the whole parade back to the zoo with an air of resignation that suggests this has happened before. Gorilla certainly knows the ropes; he and the mouse (still toting the banana) follow her back, this time to settle in the middle of the bed. The amiable cartoon characters, vibrant palette, and affectionate tone of the author's art recall Thacher Hurd's cheerful illustrations. Delightful. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: April 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-22445-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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