A (mostly) heartwarming follow-up visit.
In this wordless picture book, Frazee’s lonely farmer hosts another visitor from the train on the horizon.
The elderly White gent first met in The Farmer and the Clown (2014) walks home from a picnic, looking rather down, unaware he is being followed by a small monkey in a red fez and yellow frill around its neck. As he settles into his empty house, he notices the smiling monkey at the window. He lets the monkey in the front door, but after a dizzying spread depicting the monkey running amok, the farmer sends the monkey out. The frowning monkey spends the night outside as snow begins to fall. The farmer awakes to deep snow and immediately goes out to rescue the monkey. After a warm fire, soup, a story, and falling asleep on the farmer’s shoulder, the monkey spends two nights at the farmer’s house; on the day in between, the farmer and his animals tolerate the monkey’s loud, wild ways. Finally, like the clown in the book before him, the monkey hears the circus train coming and goes on its way, smiles all around. Frazee’s soft colors, careful lines, and masterful compositions work their magic once again to evoke mood and feeling in a way that children can immediately grasp. The experience hits adult readers just as powerfully, though readers who decry picture-book depictions of monkeys for reinforcing negative stereotypes of Black people will find no mitigation in the monkey’s antics. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8.3-by-20.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 54.1% of actual size.)
A (mostly) heartwarming follow-up visit. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4619-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books.
Curious about the Big Wide World outside his Sasquatch community, Hugo makes a friend who is of it.
Sasquatch Hugo’s bedroom is inside a cave and possesses the charming feature of a small stream running through it that he can sail his little toy boat on. It’s cool, but he yearns to see the Big Wide World. When he asks his smart friend Gigi if a Sasquatch might become a sailor, she says it’s possible but would be difficult—the primary rule of their people is to not be seen by Humans. Then, in everyone’s favorite Hide and Go Sneak class, which is held outside, a Human appears; Hugo laughs at the sight, drawing Human attention in a taboo-breaking mistake. Shortly after, Hugo’s toy boat floats into the cave with a Human toy—soon, it’s facilitating a pen-pal–type relationship that’s derailed when Hugo confesses to being a Sasquatch and Human Boone, a budding cryptozoologist, doesn’t believe him. How Hugo and Boone resolve this misapprehension and become friends in a joint search for the Ogopogo concludes this series opener. Potter keeps the third-person narrative tightly focused on Hugo’s perspective, and the details she uses to flesh out the Sasquatch world are delightfully playful. Sala’s drawings depict a homey Sasquatch cavern community, Boone as a freckled, white boy, and Hugo as a hairily benevolent behemoth.
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books. (final art unseen) (Fantasy. 5-9)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2859-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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