This is Maurice Sendak's comic strip apotheosis of the Thirties/ dusky dream of sensual bliss/ bim bam boom bombshell of a child-echoing picture book. Sometimes Mickey's toss and turn from bed into the night kitchen and back keeps in time to internal rhyme, or sets up a rhythmic chant or a remembrance of things heard, or makes sport with words; while what's doing in the kitchen is the concoction of a cake by three Oliver Hardy cooks who take Mickey for milk until "right in the middle of the steaming and the making and the smelling and the baking Mickey poked through and said I'M NOT THE MILK AND THE MILK'S NOT ME! I'M MICKEY!" But wait: in his bread dough plane with his milk-pitcher helmet, Mickey flies up and up and up "and over the top of the Milky Way," then dives down into the bottle "singing 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me. God Bless Milk and God Bless Me!'" God bless naked and naturally exposed, Mickey is pure joy. . . or as the cooks chorus "MILK IN THE BATTER! MILK IN THE BATTER! WE BAKE CAKE! AND NOTHING'S THE MATTER!" (Can it go without saying that the pictures are superb.)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1970
ISBN: 0064434362
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
In an imaginative wordless picture book, Wiesner (illustrator of Kite Flyer, 1986) tours a dream world suggested by the books and objects in a boy's room. A series of transitions—linked by a map in the book that the boy was reading as he fell asleep—wafts him, pajama-clad, from an aerial view of hedge-bordered fields to a chessboard with chess pieces, some changing into their realistic counterparts (plus a couple of eerie roundheaded figures based on pawns that reappear throughout); next appear a castle; a mysterious wood in which lurks a huge, whimsical dragon; the interior of a neoclassical palace; and a series of fantastic landscapes that eventually transport the boy back to his own bed. Most interesting here are the visual links Wiesner uses in his journey's evolution; it's fun to trace the many details from page to page. There's a bow to Van Allsburg, and another to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, but Wiesner's broad double-spreads of a dream world—whose muted colors suggest a silent space outside of time—have their own charm. Intriguing.
Pub Date: April 20, 1988
ISBN: 978-0-06-156741-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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