The joke’s delivery is a touch labored, but who would argue that there are benefits to having large, toothy friends on tap?...
When Steve the fish swims up, all the other denizens of the sea dart off at top speed. How come?
“Finding love has been a challenge,” Steve admits, but otherwise he doesn’t mind that smaller fish, bigger fish, even jellyfish and octopuses—not to mention human swimmers—retreat in terror at the sight of him. Depicted as a relatively diminutive blue-and-white–striped fish with mild-mannered pop-eyes, Steve is (or at least pretends to be) mildly puzzled, as compared to pufferfish, viperfish, and other toothier, spikier, or rather ugly denizens of the deep (“let’s not forget the BLOBFISH”), he’s not really very scary looking. For readers who aren’t all that up on marine biology Brewis inserts big fins or elongated stretches of gray along the edges of her cartoon illustrations…culminating at last in Steve’s introduction of his best friend, George, a humongous, spread-filling, blue and gray shark who disingenuously chortles, “Hey, Steve, don’t scare the fishies!” A brief “True Part” follows, revealing that Steve is a pilot fish, expanding on the “mutualistic relationship” between pilot fish and sharks and explaining, probably gratuitously, that “pilot fish are not really scary at all.” The illustrations are unsurprisingly dominated by washes of blue, translucent layers of darker blue, yellow, green, and the occasional red delineating other ocean animals.
The joke’s delivery is a touch labored, but who would argue that there are benefits to having large, toothy friends on tap? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61067-825-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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