In her first book for children since Ashanti to Zulu (1976, a Caldecott winner for illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon), Musgrove retells a beguiling Ashanti tale about the origin of kente cloth. Two gentle weavers discover by chance an astonishing, multicolored spider web in the forest. To their dismay—as much at the spider’s loss as their own—their efforts to carry it home for study destroy it. Returning to the spot the next day, however, the two find it re-spun, and its arachnid creator waiting to dance its patterns for them until they can create their own webs. In Cairns’s (Off to the Sweet Shores of Africa, 2000) big, vibrant illustrations the spider’s webs, and the cloth that they inspire, are symphonies of dazzling, saturated color, artfully set off both by lush tropical backgrounds, and the deep skin tones of the human figures. Like kente cloth itself, this will have a powerful visual impact on all who see it, and Musgrove adds value to her simply told narrative with a concluding discussion of her sources and the significance of the cloth’s various patterns. (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-98787-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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