A decent storyline and better-than-decent art show good intentions—but different ones, which find few if any points of...
A child and his grandma join forces to restore a very special train.
Lonely Jakob is excited to find a battered old rocket in his space station’s hangar, but his grandma is over the moon. “It’s the SPACE TRAIN!” she crows—recalling how in her youth it “crisscrossed the universe on tracks of stardust,” so fast “it made the stars look like streaks in the sky.” Putting their heads together, and with help from Jakob’s robo-chicken, Derek, and the crotchety, work-shy ToolBot, the two labor to restore the hulk…blasting off at last in search of new worlds and, Jakob hopes, new friends. Worthy though this intergenerational plot may be, it wastes a set of spectacular illustrations. Mountford depicts his space-dwelling duo, both brown-skinned and with wild mops of almost luminescent blue (Jakob) or lavender (Grandma) hair, transforming a dim and dusty relic into a breathtaking, bright-orange behemoth with dramatically rakish lines. Views of the angular vessel arrowing through dramatic starscapes or, in one fondly remembered glimpse inside, abrim with a wildly diverse array of nonhuman passengers offer heady promise of interstellar encounters and exotic ports of call. Alas, despite traces of lyrical language in the narrative, that larger promise remains disappointingly unfulfilled.
A decent storyline and better-than-decent art show good intentions—but different ones, which find few if any points of connection. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68010-158-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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