``...even if Eileen was horrible sometimes, she was still Josie Smith's best friend,'' concludes this fourth book about a little girl who lives with her mother in an English village. In three long chapters, Josie inadvertently ends by having an impromptu picnic birthday after her mother says they can't afford a party; weathers homesickness when she's left for two nights with Eileen, who has a notably unsympathetic mother; and is unexpectedly given a real bride's bouquet at the end of a day she's spent making costumes and bunches of dandelions in emulation of a neighborhood wedding in which Eileen is taking part. Josie's small troubles and the complications resulting from her imaginative efforts to make up for ``Mom's'' lack of time and money invariably ring true; the lively dialogue, spiced with the petty insults normal children exchange, and the parents' failure to understand that good intentions often have mischievous results are perfectly believable. Simply told, unusually honest, and entirely childlike, fine for independent reading or for sharing with younger children, Josie continues to be a winner. Illustrations not seen. (Young reader. 5-10)
Pub Date: April 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-50534-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Rylant's debut as a picture book illustrator (not to be confused with her board book debut as a collagist in The Everyday Books, 1993) offers sweet comfort to all who have lost loved ones, pets or otherwise. ``When dogs go to Heaven, they don't need wings because God knows that dogs love running best. He gives them fields. Fields and fields and fields.'' There are geese to bark at, plenty of children, biscuits, and, for those that need them, homes. In page- filling acrylics, small, simply brushed figures float against huge areas of bright colors: pictures infused with simple, doggy joy. At the end, an old man leans on a cane as he walks up a slope toward a small white dog: ``Dogs in Dog Heaven may stay as long as they like. . . .They will be there when old friends show up. They will be there at the door.'' Pure, tender, lyrical without being overearnest, and deeply felt. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-590-41701-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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