McCurdy (The Old Man and the Fiddle, 1992, etc.) switches from his familiar woodcut style to realistic paintings of landscapes, ice, and ocean in a retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous expedition. It was 1915 when, during Shackleton's attempt to cross the polar ice cap, the Endurance became trapped in ice, soon to be crushed and sunk. McCurdy covers the desperate problems faced by the crew: how to survive without the ship; how to find food while they waited for open water; how they saved a sleeping crewman when their solid perch cracked in two during the night. Frightening voyages in lifeboats and a near-impossible climb on a snow-covered mountain are part of the story; a party of three makes it to a whaling station on South Georgia Island, and no men are lost. The telling is clear and laced with excellent detail, but the picture-book format is less than ideal, requiring an author's note, foreword, and afterword for many of the details; further, the older audience for which the material has the most appeal may be uncomfortable with the format. Although McCurdy's galvanizing enthusiasm comes across on every page, the pictures- -and the bleak, unchanging landscape—don't communicate the cold nor the toll that time and the elements took on the men's clothing and faces. Still, aspects of this are riveting, and it will certainly lead readers into longer, more detailed accounts of this two-year expedition. (map, bibliography, index) (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8027-8438-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adequate for its audience.
The latest in the Kingdom of Fantasy series sends Geronimo Stilton on a scavenger hunt for magic items to stop an evil wizard.
Plagued by his own success writing fantasy novels based on his wild dreams, Geronimo Stilton finds himself mobbed in public for autographs and then in private pressured by his friends and family to hurry up and write the next one. But before he can write, he needs to dream the next story, which leads to a comical series of events as his sleep is continually thwarted. Finally, after joining his nephew on a beach visit, he falls asleep and ends up in the Kingdom of Fantasy. While it’s a stand-alone story, there is also a concise rundown of his previous adventures. The fairy queen, Blossom, sends a crab messenger to deliver a mission to Geronimo. He must collect the seven enchanted charms from their guardians before an evil wizard can steal and use them to conquer the land. Although the plot makes good use of the various fantasy settings (resulting in lovely maps), it’s not terribly original or engaging on its own. The crab sidekick, Chatterclaw, is an entertaining mix of cheerful pessimism and questionable judgment, though his forgetful speech pattern wears thin. The art throughout goes beyond bolstering the story, offering a variety of interactive puzzles.
Adequate for its audience. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-74615-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
A bewildering mishmash of unintegrated elements, long as well as incoherent.
A child in search of something special to bring to class finds it in a jungle temple—then loses it to a rival.
Discovering most of a torn map in her backpack, Rosie dons her grandpa’s Indiana Jones–style hat, navigates her way to a cabinet in his study, and with her dog, Rolland, goes through it to a wilderness adventure leading to a giant “monkey king” with a glowing golden ball. Up pops sneering classmate Freddy Jones with the rest of the map. He takes the ball from Rosie, leaving her with only the hat for an anticlimactic show and tell the next day. To Freddy, though, the ball is just a rock, so he tosses it aside after school. Rosie picks it up…and that night it begins to glow again. And that’s it. Berg makes the story even less meaningful, if that were possible, by leaving readers to wonder how Rosie and Freddy came by the map—or even what was on Freddy’s portion, since it’s only shown unreadably folded up—as well as how exactly everyone gets back home or why the stolen artifact (which seems to be just a MacGuffin with no actual agency or significance) should glow for one thief but not the other. The art is somewhat better put together than the strung-out plot, though characters’ faces are sometimes distorted.
A bewildering mishmash of unintegrated elements, long as well as incoherent. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77147-058-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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