One of the best-known English madrigals is “The Silver Swan,” a haunting melody about a swan’s dying song written in 1612 by Orlando Gibbons, and familiar to anyone who has spent much time in a choir robe. The piercing melancholy of this famous song permeates this sad and rather disturbing book, another example of the newer breed of picture books for adults masquerading as stories for children. A young, unnamed, and apparently motherless boy tells a wordy, first-person story of his fascination with a silver swan who swims in the pond on the boy’s farm. The swan’s mate arrives, cygnets arrive, the hungry fox arrives, and it’s the bloody scene from every National Geographic wildlife TV special all over again. The boy is horrified at the cruel course of nature and hears the swan’s dying song (mercifully offstage) before he finds a “terrible wreath of white feathers nearby.” He expresses his anger at losing “his” silver swan, wanting to kill the fox, but then realizes that the fox is a mother with children to feed, too. In the last pages, the boy observes the bereaved male swan alone and languishing as soon as his babies are grown, until another female arrives at the pond to become the swan’s new mate. It’s hard to know who would choose this book, although its large, landscape-format illustrations in chalk pastels by Birmingham are undeniably exquisite. The story is too long, lyrical, and sad for preschoolers and the format of an oversized picture book is too young for older elementary students. It might possibly be comforting as a gift to someone who is bereaved, but the facile replacement of the swan’s mate provides a “life goes on” message that might be cruel in itself. Perhaps it’s just for adult collectors of beautiful picture books, then, or for those who appreciate the pathos of a swan song. Despite beautiful art, a misguided attempt that fails to take flight. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8037-2543-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure.
It’s not truffles but doubloons that tickle this porcine wayfarer’s fancy.
Funke and Meyer make another foray into chapter-book fare after Emma and the Blue Genie (2014). Here, mariner Stout Sam and deckhand Pip eke out a comfortable existence on Butterfly Island ferrying cargo to and fro. Life is good, but it takes an unexpected turn when a barrel washes ashore containing a pig with a skull-and-crossbones pendant around her neck. It soon becomes clear that this little piggy, dubbed Julie, has the ability to sniff out treasure—lots of it—in the sea. The duo is pleased with her skills, but pride goeth before the hog. Stout Sam hands out some baubles to the local children, and his largess attracts the unwanted attention of Barracuda Bill and his nasty minions. Now they’ve pignapped Julie, and it’s up to the intrepid sailors to save the porker and their own bacon. The succinct word count meets the needs of kids looking for early adventure fare. The tale is slight, bouncy, and amusing, though Julie is never the piratical buccaneer the book’s cover seems to suggest. Meanwhile, Meyer’s cheery watercolors are as comfortable diagramming the different parts of a pirate vessel as they are rendering the dread pirate captain himself.
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure. (Adventure. 7-9)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37544-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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