Readers of Nina Laden's The Night I Followed the Dog (1994) and Bruce Ingman's A Night on the Tiles (1999) will readily accept this proposition that babies, too, lead a secret life in the wee hours. Here Baby Brenda rises to raid the refrigerator, then wiggles through the cat door to join her friends at the Midnight Café—where a tense encounter with Baby Mario and his buddies dissolves into a messy, joyous mêlée, thanks to a wagonload of wibbly-wobbly Jell-o. Later, tummies full, the stubby revelers wash off under sprinklers and scatter to their homes. James fills her luminous scenes with squads of exuberant diaper or Doctor Denton–clad toddlers, along with the occasional dog, and closes with a close-up of carrot-topped Brenda cheerfully upending a bowl of cereal over her head at the breakfast table, to the tune of a resonant belch. Parents and older sibs who wonder why babies get so much more pleasure out of playing with food than eating it will understand at last, thanks to this follow-up to The Midnight Gang (1996). (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-10412-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
Transitioning readers will feel accomplished and will surely look for future volumes to see what happens in Mia’s new life.
In this first volume of a new chapter-book series, a little girl named Mia discovers she’s a superhero.
Mia Macarooney is “a total disaster machine.” Everywhere she goes, chaos and mayhem follow (literally, in the case of Chaos—that’s the name of her cat). Except now she’s received an unusual letter, inviting her to the Program for In Training Superheroes, and she is totally bowled over. It turns out her accidents are often results of her superpowers, which she will learn to hone in her after-school hours at the PITS. As if that weren’t enough of a shock, Mia’s parents deliver the thrilling news that they are superheroes too! Her father is fluent in animal speech, and her mother can fly. Everything moves quickly at the PITS. Mia embarrasses herself in front of everyone during the entrance exam but ends up feeling supported and ready to learn…in the next volume. Freckled, brown-skinned, curly-fro–sporting Mia is an adorable protagonist. An overuse of exclamation points keeps the adrenaline running without a steady stream of exciting events—or even a climax and resolution—but with the large, bold type and the cute illustrations full of personality, emerging readers will be happy to read this book independently. What’s more exciting than that?
Transitioning readers will feel accomplished and will surely look for future volumes to see what happens in Mia’s new life. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3270-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Action, clever humor, delightful illustrations and expectation-defying secret identities—when does the next one come out?
Perfect Princess Magnolia has a secret—her alter ego is the Princess in Black, a superhero figure who protects the kingdom!
When nosy Duchess Wigtower unexpectedly drops by Princess Magnolia’s castle, Magnolia must protect her secret identity from the duchess’s prying. But then Magnolia’s monster alarm, a glitter-stone ring, goes off. She must save the day, leaving the duchess unattended in her castle. After a costume change, the Princess in Black joins her steed, Blacky (public identity: Frimplepants the unicorn), to protect Duff the goat boy and his goats from a shaggy, blue, goat-eating monster. When the monster refuses to see reason, Magnolia fights him, using special moves like the “Sparkle Slam” and the “Twinkle Twinkle Little Smash.” The rounded, cartoony illustrations featuring chubby characters keep the fight sequence soft and comical. Watching the fight, Duff notices suspicious similarities between the Princess in Black and Magnolia—quickly dismissed as “a silly idea”—much like the duchess’s dismissal of some discovered black stockings as being simply dirty, as “princesses don’t wear black.” The gently ironic text will amuse readers (including adults reading the book aloud). The large print and illustrations expand the book to a longish-yet-manageable length, giving newly independent readers a sense of accomplishment. The ending hints at another hero, the Goat Avenger.
Action, clever humor, delightful illustrations and expectation-defying secret identities—when does the next one come out? (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6510-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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