What is it about cats and moons? Here Oscar, who loves high places, takes a mighty leap from the rooftop and actually reaches the Moon—where he finds lots of silvery feline playmates and a crater filled with sweet cream left by a passing cow. Just in time he also finds out that tasting that cream would make him forget his beloved boy back on Earth. That would never do, so home he goes though, as usual, getting down is much harder than going up. Pairing a small striped cat and a lad oddly topped with short blue dreads, Ceccoli incorporates photographs, collage elements and figures resembling small plastic toys into elaborately worked digital starscapes that have a convincingly 3-D look. Young readers who wonder where cats go at night will find this an equally free-range alternative to the likes of Bruce Ingman’s Night on the Tiles (1999), Helen Landalf’s Secret Night Life of Cats (1998), illustrated by Mark Rimland, or David Almond’s Kate, the Cat and the Moon (2005), illustrated by Stephen Lambert. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-56316-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
With wordplay reminiscent of Margie Palatini at her best, Helakoski takes four timorous chickens into, then out of, the literal and figurative woods. Fleeing the henhouse after catching sight of a wolf, the pusillanimous pullets come to a deep ditch: “ ‘What if we can’t jump that far?’ ‘What if we fall in the ditch?’ ‘What if we get sucked into the mud?’ The chickens tutted, putted, and flutted. They butted into themselves and each other, until one by one . . . ” they do fall in. But then they pick themselves up and struggle out. Ensuing encounters with cows and a lake furnish similar responses and outcomes; ultimately they tumble into the wolf’s very cave, where they “picked, pecked, and pocked. They ruffled, puffled, and shuffled. They shrieked, squeaked, and freaked, until . . . ” their nemesis scampers away in panic. Fluttering about in pop-eyed terror, the portly, partly clothed hens make comical figures in Cole’s sunny cartoons (as does the flummoxed wolf)—but the genuine triumph in their final strut—“ ‘I am a big, brave chicken,’ said one chicken. ‘Ohh . . . ’ said the others. ‘Me too.’ ‘Me three.’ ‘Me four’ ”—brings this tribute to chicken power to a rousing close. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-47575-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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