An intelligent read-aloud for those not quite ready to tackle the existing independent readers.
Every dog has his day, but Balto’s life is comparable to an early 20th-century movie star’s.
McCarthy’s coverage begins in Nome, Alaska, in 1925. Dr. Welch presides at the bedside of a diphtheria-stricken child and follows up with a desperate telegram for the serum needed to prevent an epidemic. While Balto’s legendary role in braving a blizzard to deliver the antitoxin in record time is dramatically portrayed, the author’s primary interest lies in recounting the rest of the Siberian husky’s story. Balto went on to star in a film about the relay race that prefigured the Iditarod. He stayed at the Biltmore in Los Angeles, rubbed elbows with famous actors and posed for a sculpture in New York’s Central Park. When the canine’s fortunes changed, he performed in vaudeville until a Cleveland businessman (and schoolchildren) paid for his transfer to a zoo. Employing the style established in her previous historical investigations (ranging from Charles Atlas to bubble gum), the author selects child-friendly details, explains challenging words in context and re-creates period documents and settings. Her signature acrylic caricatures, identifiable by oversized eyes, convey a sense of attentiveness in keeping with the narrative. The predominance of snow and gray light creates a mood of remote desolation; the palette brightens to warm greens at the conclusion.
An intelligent read-aloud for those not quite ready to tackle the existing independent readers. (maps, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-84460-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
A snug, funny round of hijinks by low dogs.
Housebound wiener dogs Augie and Perry get up to no good when left on their own.
Posing his pooches on four legs or, anthropomorphically, two (or even, at the beginning, as busts on stands), Falconer takes a break from his long-running Olivia series to proffer as winsome a doggy duo as ever was. Drawn with great and often hilariously expressive precision—and frequently placed on entirely blank backgrounds to call attention to the fact—the two dachshunds appear at first glance as dignified as “little Roman emperors.” Appearances can be deceiving, though: “Most of the time Augie looked more serious. Perry was all over the place.” As their human family, never seen (except once as light-skinned hands), is gone all day at work or school, the dogs look for ways to relieve their boredom…first by tussling over a ball, then by figuring out how to open the back door to an exciting world of flowers to water, a pool to splash in, and, best of all, a lawn to excavate (“Dachshunds love to dig”). The sound of a car pulling in may touch off some momentary panic (“We’re going to get in TROUBLE, Augie!”), but dachshunds are also smart enough to run back inside and exude innocence convincingly enough to earn treats rather than punishment. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A snug, funny round of hijinks by low dogs. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-295447-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Michael di Capua/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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