The title says it all: Wannabe explorer Beetle McGrady, whose heroes are Amelia Earhart and Marco Polo, gets herself into trouble during Fun with Food Week by adding ants to her group’s food pyramid. However, when push comes to shove, Beetle isn’t quite as eager to engage gastronomically with insects as she’d like. With classmates Roger, Lacey and Mona forming a Greek chorus as Beetle wrestles with her squeamishness, McDonald walks both Beetle and reader companionably through the week until Chef Suzanne shows up on Friday with a selection of wriggly delicacies that allows Beetle to find her inner bug-eater. Manning’s watercolor illustrations feature a parka-clad ant (from Ant-arctica, presumably) who watches the freckle-faced, Pippi Longstocking–pigtailed Beetle’s struggle from corner vignettes. The images of Chef Suzanne’s creepy-crawlies are amiably disgusting; Beetle’s grossed-out classmates nicely satisfying. Washy blue images of Beetle as anteater and mealworm form visual counterpoint to a text that finds its subject’s voice beautifully: “[B]ird’s-nest soup did not make her Marco Polo. Bird’s-nest soup just made her a spit-eater.” Agreeably icky fun. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-001354-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books.
Curious about the Big Wide World outside his Sasquatch community, Hugo makes a friend who is of it.
Sasquatch Hugo’s bedroom is inside a cave and possesses the charming feature of a small stream running through it that he can sail his little toy boat on. It’s cool, but he yearns to see the Big Wide World. When he asks his smart friend Gigi if a Sasquatch might become a sailor, she says it’s possible but would be difficult—the primary rule of their people is to not be seen by Humans. Then, in everyone’s favorite Hide and Go Sneak class, which is held outside, a Human appears; Hugo laughs at the sight, drawing Human attention in a taboo-breaking mistake. Shortly after, Hugo’s toy boat floats into the cave with a Human toy—soon, it’s facilitating a pen-pal–type relationship that’s derailed when Hugo confesses to being a Sasquatch and Human Boone, a budding cryptozoologist, doesn’t believe him. How Hugo and Boone resolve this misapprehension and become friends in a joint search for the Ogopogo concludes this series opener. Potter keeps the third-person narrative tightly focused on Hugo’s perspective, and the details she uses to flesh out the Sasquatch world are delightfully playful. Sala’s drawings depict a homey Sasquatch cavern community, Boone as a freckled, white boy, and Hugo as a hairily benevolent behemoth.
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books. (final art unseen) (Fantasy. 5-9)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2859-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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