Good intentions crash and burn when the ill winds of pedantry overwhelm this story of a garden’s year. Here is Little Groundhog doing what groundhogs were born to do: seek and destroy gardens. Along comes Squirrel, looking to turn Nature on its ear with admonition and instruction. “ ‘Little Groundhog!’ Squirrel scolded. ‘This garden does not belong to you. . . . Why don’t you plant your OWN garden?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Little Groundhog told her, embarrassed, ‘but I don’t know how.’ ‘Well, then,’ replied Squirrel, ‘I will show you.’ ” And he does, teaching elementary gardening as he goes. While there is no denying the elegance of Cherry’s illustrations—some full-bleed, others bordered by the subjects of the page, all peopled with winsome creatures—the text is a relentless machine that force-feeds its message, something like what a duck must experience getting the foie gras treatment. “First, you will need seeds.” “First, we need to dig in the soil to loosen it up.” “First, we’ll need to cut them into little pieces with 2 sprouts each.” Sensible comments are made regarding organic gardening, the big difference in flavor between garden fresh vegetables and the store-bought variety, and the pleasure of the harvest, though this last, too, can feel strained: “Little Groundhog cried jubilantly.” “Little Groundhog rejoiced!” Maybe it’s all best summed up in Cherry’s footnote: “But it’s not magic—it’s science; it’s life.” Banishing magic from the garden—there’s an idea whose time should never come. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-32371-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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