Another surreal adventure for Elmo, hero of Moog-Moog, Space Barber (1990). Stuck with a book-report book he's sure he won't enjoy—Frog Medicine—Elmo doesn't even open it. Suddenly, the assignment's due: ``I'll just make up something,'' he decides, but draws a blank. Meanwhile, the froggie details that have been invading Teague's art burst forth on Elmo's feet, now green and webbed. After a visit to the book's author, Dr. Galoof, a frog whose desk and bookcase of medical tomes sit among reeds and lily pads, elicits solid advice (``Just do your homework...You really should read more''), Elmo settles down, finds he enjoys the book after all, and returns to normal—even his feet. Offbeat and wryly amusing, but it's the illustrations that command attention: the solid, hard-edged forms are alive with energy, with even skyscrapers leaning purposefully; Elmo's cat acts as a constant observer, by turns anxious, bored, or debonair; every scene is bathed in curiously pure light, with plenty of clever, funny details to discover. (Picture book. 5-10)*justify no*
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-590-44177-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Diarist Keena Ford is ambivalent about second grade: Girls and boys are placed in separate classes, so she will not be with her best friend, Eric. But she resolves to do her best and when Ms. Coleman turns up on the first day of school in a “COOL BELT WITH SPARKLES,” she decides things are looking up. When she mixes up her dates and leads her teacher to believe that the next day is her birthday, greed for chocolate cake overcomes honesty, plunging her into ever-deeper hot water. Morrison’s amiable illustrations clearly depict Keena as a lively African-American girl, but there is little in the text to lend her any ethnic or cultural specificity. The result is that she seems to be just another sassy, impulsive chapter-book heroine à la Clementine or Moxy Maxwell. Still, her escapades and the way she handles them ring with an emotional honesty readers will recognize: If she continues to develop, she has the potential to become a genuine character in her own right. (Fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3263-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The visuals take the cake, or rather the pie, in this folksy jaunt across the country. As a follow-up to the bestselling How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (1994), Priceman sticks with a more local focus. Here, readers take a nonsensical and roundabout journey in search of items to make a cherry pie. Hail a taxi in New York and go to “the corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio” for coal to make a pie pan, then to a cotton farm in Louisiana to make potholders, to New Mexico for clay to make a mixing bowl and so forth. Strangely, the ingredients for the actual pie are not on the shopping list, just the raw materials to make the cooking equipment. Though informational, the journey is filled with so many random distractions young readers may have a hard time sticking with it. The rustic, lush illustrations, however, are as delicious as a cherry pie right from the oven, and for readers who really want to make one, there’s a simple recipe included. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-81255-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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