An artist is born in Hodges’s shortened retelling of a classic tale from Japan. Unable to stop drawing cats on every available surface, young acolyte Sesshu Toyo is expelled from one temple. He takes shelter for the night in another that is, unknown to him, haunted by a goblin. After sweeping away the dust and, of course, drawing cats on the walls, he retires to a small cabinet—to be awakened by sounds of a ferocious battle, and greeted the following morning by the sight of a huge dead rat goblin surrounded by drawings of bloody-mouthed cats. Sogabe (Hungriest Boy in the World, 2001, etc.) uses cut paper over painted backgrounds to create strongly defined forms with subtly airbrushed shadows, and puts plump, deceptively peaceful-looking felines into nearly every scene. Hodges concludes by noting that Sesshu Toyo went on to become a famous artist—“ ‘ . . . but once he was just a boy who drew cats, just a child like you.’ ” Sogabe shows only the goblin’s tail, and does not depict the battle at all; readers more inured to terror may prefer Arthur Levine’s eerie, atmospheric version of the story (1994), illustrated by Frederic Clement. (source note) (Picture book/folktale. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-8234-1594-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure.
It’s not truffles but doubloons that tickle this porcine wayfarer’s fancy.
Funke and Meyer make another foray into chapter-book fare after Emma and the Blue Genie (2014). Here, mariner Stout Sam and deckhand Pip eke out a comfortable existence on Butterfly Island ferrying cargo to and fro. Life is good, but it takes an unexpected turn when a barrel washes ashore containing a pig with a skull-and-crossbones pendant around her neck. It soon becomes clear that this little piggy, dubbed Julie, has the ability to sniff out treasure—lots of it—in the sea. The duo is pleased with her skills, but pride goeth before the hog. Stout Sam hands out some baubles to the local children, and his largess attracts the unwanted attention of Barracuda Bill and his nasty minions. Now they’ve pignapped Julie, and it’s up to the intrepid sailors to save the porker and their own bacon. The succinct word count meets the needs of kids looking for early adventure fare. The tale is slight, bouncy, and amusing, though Julie is never the piratical buccaneer the book’s cover seems to suggest. Meanwhile, Meyer’s cheery watercolors are as comfortable diagramming the different parts of a pirate vessel as they are rendering the dread pirate captain himself.
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure. (Adventure. 7-9)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37544-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
