Backbeard the buccaneer gets a wardrobe upgrade in this waaay south of serious outing. So hairy and unsanitary that even his parrots quit in disgust, the pirate chief at last decides to exchange his filthy rags for something classier, and maybe pick up a new mascot too. Fortunately (for readers, if not for him), he finds a tailor both quick-witted and poker-faced, and soon Backbeard is strutting down the street past stunned townsfolk in a sporty boater and flashy psychedelic duds, balancing a piglet on his shoulder. His own crewmembers don’t recognize him—“You sound like the Captain, but you look like a goofball”—until a friendly melee sets them straight. Properly capped with a back cover of equally hilarious alternative outfits and a squat, glowering, hirsute paper doll, this makes the funniest makeover since Laura Rader’s Santa’s New Suit (2000). (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8027-8065-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Kelly, an eight-year-old aspiring writer, is the oldest of three children and has just moved to a new house where she shares a room with her messy sister Erin. The only kids on her block are two boys who are friendly but don't share her interests. She thinks everyone in her family is wonderful at something except for her, until she finds a private place to write her book (about a girl who becomes wonderful), Victoria. There's very little to hold interest in this story; Kelly's problems are minor, of importance only to her, and she is so self- pitying she becomes unlikable. Enderle and Tessler (A Pile of Pigs, 1993, etc.) don't give Kelly enough personality to make her real; throughout the book, the action reads more like filler than plotting. Sims's trademark black-and-white drawings amiably assist in establishing the setting. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56402-534-9
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
A collection of tiny poems set against watercolors painted in the Chinese tradition. These Tang Dynasty poems, translated from the Chinese, were traditionally memorized by children learning to read. Ho (Hush!, p. 227) tells readers in the brief, intimate introduction how the book grew out of her desire to pass these vivid four-line verses on to her own children. The poems are immediate and accessible: ``When I was little/I thought the moon was a white jade plate,/Or maybe a mirror in Heaven/Flying through blue clouds.'' In ``News of Home,'' the poet asks, ``The day you left, was the plum tree/By my window in bloom yet?'' The sound of a bell at night, the snow-white hair on an old man, frosted leaves ``redder than spring blossoms''— these seemingly artless images compress a depth of feeling nicely reflected in the pictures. The dreamlike world of recognition and memory in the watercolors is firmly yoked to the images in the poems. More mature poetry fans will recognize many of the names here; an ``About the Poets'' section offers brief biographies. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-12044-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
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