Jazz Fly and his band are back (The Jazz Fly, 2000) for a bilingual adventure: a tropical-rainforest gig plus car trouble. Using his “Jazz-Spanish” phrase book, he enlists a sleepy sloth, a hyperactive monkey and an obliging macaw, alighting at the Termite Nook in time. His quartet’s grooves are interrupted dramatically when an anteater literally crashes the party. A message—a second language enriches life—is overplayed, but the cross-cultural interplay of scat and Latin rhythms wins out. A funkified layer of elementary science, delivered winkingly, adds a soupçon of cool. “On till dawn, the two bands played. Larvae danced. A thousand eggs were laid.” The accompanying CD is positively integral: Gollub’s band’s Latin jazz arrangements are—unusual for children’s music—actually tight. The narration’s occasionally shrill, but Gollub’s iteration of the chorus (“CHOO-ka CHOO-ka TING. ¡Ay, caramba! ¿Cómo cómo llego a la CHOO-ka pachanga?”) is required hearing for anyone aspiring to read this text aloud (which is a must). Hanke supplies breezy, computer-enhanced illustrations, delivering swarming details from diaphanous wings to pools of ambient lighting to bug eyes extraordinaire. ¡Qué bueno! (author’s note) (Picture book/CD. 5-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-889910-44-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tortuga Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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