Peculiar, perplexing, and persistent—training wheels for Samuel Beckett.
When is a skunk not a skunk? When it’s a…skunk.
A bespectacled man peers out his front door at a red-nosed skunk perched on his stoop, gazing back. The skunk does nothing overtly threatening, just looks at the man and then follows him down the street. The man sports tails and a cummerbund, his red bow tie visually connecting him to the skunk’s red nose; overall, McDonnell’s palette is muted, metropolitan blacks and grays occasionally accented by peach and red. The skunk is bipedal, his posture mimicking the narrator’s as he tails the man through the city on foot and by cab—yet, the narrator tells readers, “the skunk was a skunk.” To the opera, through cemetery, carnival—a brief sojourn on a Ferris wheel is particularly symbolic of existential futility—and sewers the man flees, finally finding himself in a completely different part of the city, where he buys a new house. Here the palette changes to primary colors; there is no skunk, but the man’s visiting friends take on the look of circus clowns. Something is missing; the man leaves his housewarming party to find “[his] skunk.” On doing so, the man begins to tail the skunk, to “make sure he does not follow me again.” Adults will turn themselves inside out trying to figure it out; kids will either find the whole idea hysterical or just plain befuddling.
Peculiar, perplexing, and persistent—training wheels for Samuel Beckett. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59643-966-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An educational and entertaining series opener.
When third graders Pablo, Violet, and Deepak enter the Maker Maze, their new friendship—and their knowledge of science—is put to the test.
Pablo is looking forward to third grade. He’s got a spaceship T-shirt that matches his sneakers, he’s in the same class as his best friend, Violet, and he is ready to learn about his favorite subject: science. But new student Deepak’s wearing the exact same outfit and starts to make friends with Violet. Pablo feels jealous, but before he can process his feelings, he, Violet, and Deepak discover a mysterious riddle. Solving it together sucks them into a magical scientific world where a rainbow-haired white woman named Dr. Crisp tells them that they must solve a series of puzzles to get out of the Maker Maze. Using their knowledge of ecosystems, the three must finish in time—which they can only do if Pablo puts aside his resentment of Deepak. The book features a diverse and likable cast. Pablo’s Puerto Rican and speaks Spanish, Deepak is South Asian, and Violet appears black in the illustrations. The language in this chapter book is light and easy to read, and the scientific content is accurate, interesting, and well presented. At times, the conflict between Pablo and Deepak feels forced, but the momentum of the maze challenge carries the story past a few awkward moments. The backmatter offers two science activities.
An educational and entertaining series opener. (Science fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12298-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Tongue-in-cheek fare for post-toddler peekaboo fans.
Peering through a colored filter reveals all sorts of unconventional goings-on within seemingly ordinary homes and other buildings.
The French illustrators return to the gimmick used in their first collaboration, The Great Journey (2016), offering blocky images drawn in thick, bright red lines and patterns that vanish when viewed through a detachable circle of red acetate to reveal pale blue scenes done in a suppler style beneath. Single-line captions running underneath either suggest that there’s nothing much to see (“Everyone is calm, relaxing in their homes, or going about their business”) or, like the revelation that trucker Mrs. Khan is “carrying a package for the Banana-plane factory,” hint at droll revelations. Filtered images include several acrobats, a man shopping for a hat for his dog, a reader comfortably nestled between the humps of a camel, piles of oddly shaped packages in a post office, and (yes) workers polishing up a plane shaped like a giant banana. The journey ends at the zoo…with no animals to be seen. Where have they gone? To previous locales, which viewers are invited to reexamine more closely. Unlike the far more elaborate (and often obscure) three-colored layers in Carnovsky’s Illuminature (2016) and sequels, the underlying art here is easy to make out, and the filter is large enough to use both eyes at once. Human figures are highly stylized but still as white as the stiff paper stock.
Tongue-in-cheek fare for post-toddler peekaboo fans. (Novelty picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-84976-669-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tate/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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