An overstuffed tale that will nevertheless wriggle its way into readers’ affections, starring an out-crowd sixth grader and a tiny, worm-like creature who can make anything vanish by eating the word for it. Hatchling Fip’s taste for the printed word may be judged unacceptably “runtly and weakish” by his earthworm clan, but when he munches on an empty thumbtack box, loose papers suddenly avalanche from bulletin boards nationwide. Fip doesn’t stop there; unhappily on her way to being dubbed a SLUG (Sorry Loser Under Ground) by the classroom coterie MPOOE (Most Powerful Ones On Earth), Lerner Chanse spots him sampling an article about a newly discovered star. Learning later that the star has vanished from the skies, she confirms her suspicion by nudging him onto the school lunch menu (no more spinach soufflé—anywhere, ever again). Has Lerner found the way to acceptance—or to universal disaster? Both, as it turns out, though ensuing misadventures ranging from the near-catastrophic—as when Fip nearly eats the word “oxygen” out of her science homework—to the hilarious teach her that her little buddy’s ability is definitely nothing to trifle with. In the end, the universe is saved when a clever bookworm entices Fip to gobble down the words “Fip’s magic.” To drive home the point that actions can have unintended, far-reaching repercussions, Amato trucks in a sackful of side plots, including one wildly tangential tale involving a ruthless businessman who finally gets proper comeuppance for using thumbtacks, manufactured by captive children, to train attack dogs. Several stories bundled together, this amiable cautionary tale, often reminiscent of Clifton Fadiman’s Wally the Wordworm or Mary Haynes’s more melodramatic Wordchanger , makes a promising, if undisciplined, debut. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1468-X
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
This can’t be the last we ever hear of the Legendary Alston Boys of the purely surreal Logan County—imaginative,...
Can this really be the first time readers meet the Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County? Cousins and veteran sleuths Otto and Sheed Alston show us that we are the ones who are late to their greatness.
These two black boys are coming to terms with the end of their brave, heroic summer at Grandma’s, with a return to school just right around the corner. They’ve already got two keys to the city, but the rival Epic Ellisons—twin sisters Wiki and Leen—are steadily gaining celebrity across Logan County, Virginia, and have in hand their third key to the city. No way summer can end like this! These young people are powerful, courageous, experienced adventurers molded through their heroic commitment to discipline and deduction. They’ve got their shared, lifesaving maneuvers committed to memory (printed in a helpful appendix) and ready to save any day. Save the day they must, as a mysterious, bendy gentleman and an oversized, clingy platypus have been unleashed on the city of Fry, and all the residents and their belongings seem to be frozen in time and place. Will they be able to solve this one? With total mastery, Giles creates in Logan County an exuberant vortex of weirdness, where the commonplace sits cheek by jowl with the utterly fantastic, and populates it with memorable characters who more than live up to their setting.
This can’t be the last we ever hear of the Legendary Alston Boys of the purely surreal Logan County—imaginative, thrill-seeking readers, this is a series to look out for. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-46083-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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