“Bounce with The Daddy as he plays his fiddle. He’s eight long legs with a dot in the middle.” The poem, a mix of fact (both zoological and musical) and fancy, depicts a harvestman, or daddy longlegs, as a funky creature playing the blues, with a number of insects keeping time and accompanying him with the beat. A variety of settings, from a cafe for insects to a house from a human perspective, provides the backdrop to the poem. Kopelke’s illustrations of acrylic and colored pencil are alive with all kinds of creepy-crawlies—most decked out in groovy shades—who get down with the Daddy on multiple instruments and convene for a climactic concert onstage. For all their liveliness, however, the illustrations suffer from their depiction of the title character as a corpulent, short-legged fellow, which hardly matches the text’s description or children’s firsthand observations of the creature. A glossary of blues terms, definitions of the instruments played and a short description of the harvestman and the history of the blues is appended. The jazzy poem will be fun for sharing. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4027-4359-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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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