Carter is miffed when his best friend, Oliver, chooses someone else to go to the planetarium on his birthday. After all, they were planning on being best astronaut friends in the future. So Carter decides to build a spaceship, and phooey on Oliver. Reed’s razzmatazz mixed-media artwork, with its juicy, funky acrylics and boldly incorporated photographs, floats the project as it flows from engineer to sheet-metal worker, welder, plumber and electrician. By now, readers could easily have forgotten about Oliver—a rather flimsy pretext for launching the project, anyway—except his little head keeps poking up on each page. But Carter is too involved in the job to notice. It is gratifying to watch the ship take shape and for young readers to meet such working folk as Mr. Cutler the sheet-metal worker and Ms. Joiner the welder. When Carter chooses Oliver for the inaugural flight (though he’d kinda-sorta promised that to his generous helpmates, but forgot there were only two seats), it’s a nice gesture, but doesn’t exactly—or even remotely—have anything meaningful to say about friendship. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2193-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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