Barnett spins a probably apocryphal but nonetheless hilarious incident into a Cabinet-level crisis.
In a natural extension of his rotund cameo in Judith St. George and David Small’s So You Want To Be President! (2000), the heaviest commander in chief finds himself immovably stuck in his (standard-sized) tub one morning. “Blast!” he fumes. “This could be bad.” Forced to seek help, he calls on his vice president and the secretaries of state, agriculture, war and the rest—but their advice (“Dynamite!” “A huge vat of butter”) have obvious flaws. Will he be forced to resign? Like Small in the aforementioned Caldecott winner, Van Dusen goes for a humorous, rather than mean, caricature. He depicts the porky president as a corpulent, bare figure sporting artfully placed suds, plus a fierce glower and a bristling handlebar mustache over multiple chins. Eventually, the luxuriously appointed White House bathroom fills up with likewise caricatured officials. At the suggestion of the (petite) first lady, they pull together so effectively that they send their lardy leader rocketing out the window. Noting that when Taft denied having a bathtub custom made “[h]e was lying,” Barnett closes with a summary of his own research topped by an actual photograph of the oversized tub with several men posing inside. The soapiest, splashiest frolic featuring a head of state since Audrey and Don Wood’s King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub (1985). (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6317-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits.
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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