This Goldilocks is as headstrong as ever. One raised eyebrow and a pert look at the reader during her father’s morning advice—to not rush into places she doesn’t belong—signals that this imprudent protagonist is headed for trouble. Unlike Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man, Willey’s text plays at the edges, adjusting some minor details while maximizing the story’s moral message. The bear’s “cabin” is lair-like, littered with fish bones and fur; their beds are piles of leaves and feathers; their porridge, a mixture of beetles and scales. Upon finding the intruder of their home is a clawless creature without sharp teeth, the bears’ anger turns to sympathy. But before the bears can act Goldilocks wakes and runs, making it safely home to a father who asks if she’s remembered his earlier advice. Solomon’s use of collage adds a realistic texture and richness to the images, lending a visual interest to the narrative, the changes in which neither enhance nor upend the original classic. (Picture book/folktale. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-2494-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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