Precious as the language sounds to modern ears (the term “nursery magic” alone will likely set the eyes of even preliterate listeners to rolling), Williams’ 1922 classic remains a read-aloud standard thanks to the way big themes of life, death and change weave through its seemingly small and largely familiar domestic events. In this sumptuous unabridged edition, Spirin plays to his strengths. Visual grace notes enclose every block of text within open borders composed of finely drawn, Art Nouveau–style curlicues and tiny, naturalistic floral arrangements. These give way to full-page or full-spread close-up views of a flaxen-haired lad with a distant gaze, a treasure house of upscale antique toys rendered in painstaking detail, a winged Fairy dripping flowers and posed in languid, Botticelli curves and a homely, increasingly grubby bunny that is transformed in the final scenes to a live rabbit bursting with lithe, long-limbed vitality. Rendered in semitransparent watercolor and colored pencil, the art has an ethereal look that misses out on the warm intimacy Michael Hague brought to his interpretation (1983; reprinted in 2008), but for technical accomplishment and stateliness overmatches Monique Felix’s similarly formal pictures (1994) or the plethora of less-memorable versions. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5848-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick but adventuresome paddle into a mysterious realm.
The ocean’s depths offer extra wonders to a child who is briefly left behind on a class trip.
In the wake of their Field Trip to the Moon (2019), a racially diverse group of students boards a submarine (yellow, but not thatone) for a wordless journey to the ocean’s bottom. Donning pressure suits, the children follow their teacher past a swarm of bioluminescent squid, cluster around a black smoker, and pause at an old shipwreck before plodding back. One student, though, is too absorbed in taking pictures to catch the signal to depart and is soon alone amid ancient ruins—where a big, striped, friendly, finny creature who is more than willing to exchange selfies joins the child, but it hides away when the sub-bus swoops back into sight to pick up its stray. Though The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor (1994) carries a considerably richer informational load, in his easy-to-follow sequential panels Hare does accurately depict a spare assortment of benthic life and features, and he caps the outing with a labeled gallery of the errant student’s photos (including “Atlantis?” and “Pliosaur?”). The child is revealed at the end to be Black. Hare also adds cutaway views at the end of a diving suit and the sub. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-19-inch double-page spreads viewed at 40% of actual size.)
A quick but adventuresome paddle into a mysterious realm. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4630-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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