The year’s second book to shine the spotlight on New York City’s most famous red-tailed hawk provides fun images but misses the narrative mark. McCarthy populates her illustrations with her characteristically pop-eyed cartoon people, here joined by comically round-eyed hawks. The text details the appearance of Pale Male in Manhattan, his romance with Lola and the subsequent building of their nest and the hatching and fledging of their chicks. The avid attention paid to these urban hawks by the city’s birdwatching community receives some attention as well, but aside from some uncertainty about the ability of the chicks to fly across the street to the park (which they do in the middle of the night), there’s no narrative tension to enliven the plot. Inexplicably, the story avoids the stuff-of-legends conflict with the hawk-hating residents of 927 Fifth Avenue that Jeanette Winter chronicles so successfully in The Tale of Pale Male (March 2007). Although this story appears in the lengthy author’s note (along with a “Learn More About Central Park” featurette and a jam-packed bibliography), its curious absence from the body of the text leaves readers with little to care about. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4169-3359-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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