Obi the gerbil’s latest adventure is an uncomplicated, entertaining romp with a lesson about the trouble that follows when...
In this third volume to feature Obi, an endearingly flawed little gerbil who is always getting herself into trouble, the pampered pet accidentally hitches a ride to school.
Obi shares her owner Rachel’s love with two other pets, a golden retriever named Kenobi and another gerbil named Wan, but she is secure in the knowledge that she’s Rachel’s favorite. Or is she? When Rachel writes an essay about her favorite pet, the troublemaking mouse Mr. Durkins plants a seed of doubt in Obi’s mind, and she becomes obsessed with discovering the subject of Rachel’s essay. The determined gerbil winds up stranded in Rachel’s backpack, eventually ending up at school, where she is left overnight. After all the kids have gone, Obi engages in silly hijinks with an assortment of school pets who make her pass the I’m-Really-Not-the-Principal’s-Spy Test, but ultimately, she gets what she’s after—a good look at Rachel’s homework assignment—and learns her true place in the little girl’s heart. Short chapters, interspersed illustrations and the funny narrative voice make this series a good choice for readers just wandering into chapter-book territory.
Obi the gerbil’s latest adventure is an uncomplicated, entertaining romp with a lesson about the trouble that follows when we allow others to stir up doubt about our most cherished relationships. (Animal fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3854-6
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Even readers mad for all things horse won’t give this more than a quick graze before galloping off to richer pastures.
Bright colors and ornate furbelows flash in this survey of horsey fashion through the ages.
The vague topic and Patent’s accompanying commentary—being noticeably thin on specifics—come off as pretexts for an album of portraits for coltish horse lovers. Unfortunately, Brett doesn’t pick up the slack, as both horses and human figures posing in her flat paintings are drawn with unfinished, generic features, and the various blankets, braids, straps, plumes, fringes, saddles and pieces of armor on view are neither consistently identified nor displayed to best advantage. Grouped by function, the gallery of 14 examples opens with war horses (including armored steeds from an unspecified period of the Middle Ages and an Egyptian chariot confusingly paired to an Assyrian scenario set several centuries too early). It then goes on to portray horses trained to dance, race or compete in never-explained ways as draft teams. Following a final batch duded up for parades or, in ancient Scythia, ritual burial, a pair of labeled portraits, one of equine body parts and the other of standard tack, is shoehorned in.
Even readers mad for all things horse won’t give this more than a quick graze before galloping off to richer pastures. (index, bibliography, websites) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-58089-362-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
“There’s things you’ve seen and things you may not have, but there ain’t nothing that’s impossible, sugar,” says a village...
Nashville, who has qualities both human and birdlike, feels compelled to follow his avian destiny.
The storytelling is folksy, poetic and seductive, beginning, “Nashville and his family lived in a house perched in the branches of the largest pecan tree in the village of Goosepimple.” Little by little, readers learn how Nashville, unlike his adoring younger sister, Junebug, was hatched from an egg. He has a beak and feathers but, alas, no wings. Morstad’s illustrations support the funnier details, including the dinner-table “perch swings” that Nashville’s mother has installed “to make Nashville more comfortable” as he eats his seeds while his family eats typical human fare. The deadpan humor of Flat Stanley is invoked when Nashville’s parents take him for his annual physical examination—at the veterinarian’s office. In added playfulness, said vet is Dr. Larkin; the village teacher is Miss Starling. This allegory of growing up and finding one’s figurative wings is told sweetly and without great angst, despite inclusions of such subjects as school bullying and Nashville’s empathetic but highly illegal pet-store shenanigans. Yet there is an underlying melancholy throughout, somewhat mitigated by the possibility of future communications from the appealing bird-boy.
“There’s things you’ve seen and things you may not have, but there ain’t nothing that’s impossible, sugar,” says a village widow; readers will end the book with a new sense of possible. (Magical realism. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3867-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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