If only all students were as diligent and truthful as this one (and every homework search turned out as happily).
It turns out the dog really did eat the homework.
Garland’s title page nicely sets the scene and establishes the young narrator’s veracity: He is dutifully sitting at his desk, lamp blazing, doing his homework. But the next morning, the papers are nowhere to be found. In an excellent portrayal of searches by real-life kids, who imagine that everyone would want and naturally steal what they are looking for, spread upon spread of full-bleed illustrations in rich colors show readers what the boy imagines happened to his homework: “Maybe Martians from outer space invaded my room and abducted my homework!” Plundered by pirates, taken by a slithery boa constrictor and run away to join the circus are just a few of the other possibilities. But just as his mother is calling that it’s getting late, he hears some suspicious slobbering from the living room. (The question of where the homework was between the boy’s desperate search for it, dog at his heels, and his hearing these noises is never addressed.) Of course, the boy simply must drag the dog to school to confront his teacher, and a lucky deus ex machina belies her suspicions. Garland’s trademark style combines fuzzily digital illustrations (especially of hair and fur) with collaged patterns and textures.
If only all students were as diligent and truthful as this one (and every homework search turned out as happily). (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-43655-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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