At a faux-woodgrain fruitstand rifled with lushly painted fruit, an old woman buys strawberries. Here and throughout, only her gnomelike face and her hands are painted like the rest of the picture; her flat gray form matches and bleeds into the background. This allows for some tricky hide-and-seek later, when the Gray Lady is being pursued by the Snatcher—an electric blue creature clad in luminescent green cape and purple slouch hat, who seems a kiddie-cartoon version of a psychedelic-album-cover grotesque. Lurking now outside the fruitstand, the Snatcher trails the Lady past showcased pastry and other window displays. He reaches out but misses, as snakes from a passing Indian woman's basket form a surrealistic barrier between him and the poster-basic bus the Lady is boarding. Riding the Indian woman's skateboard, the Snatcher reappears at the end of the bus line, and the terror mounts. The Gray Lady flees from him through a thicket of reaching, Rackhamesque trees, and leads him into deeper, pretty greenery . . . where he stops, turns, plunges into a sunlit, lacy blackberry glade, and feasts blissfully on the berries. Thus saved, the Gray Lady shows up in her patterned, textured parlor and distributes strawberries to a family of six—which includes another gnomelike woman, outlandishly dressed in striped leg warmers. The jacket flap calls this wordless string of gratuitous effects an allegory, which we will accept as part of the joke.
Pub Date: March 1, 1980
ISBN: 0689803818
Page Count: -
Publisher: Four Winds/MacMillan
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1980
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
In an imaginative wordless picture book, Wiesner (illustrator of Kite Flyer, 1986) tours a dream world suggested by the books and objects in a boy's room. A series of transitions—linked by a map in the book that the boy was reading as he fell asleep—wafts him, pajama-clad, from an aerial view of hedge-bordered fields to a chessboard with chess pieces, some changing into their realistic counterparts (plus a couple of eerie roundheaded figures based on pawns that reappear throughout); next appear a castle; a mysterious wood in which lurks a huge, whimsical dragon; the interior of a neoclassical palace; and a series of fantastic landscapes that eventually transport the boy back to his own bed. Most interesting here are the visual links Wiesner uses in his journey's evolution; it's fun to trace the many details from page to page. There's a bow to Van Allsburg, and another to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, but Wiesner's broad double-spreads of a dream world—whose muted colors suggest a silent space outside of time—have their own charm. Intriguing.
Pub Date: April 20, 1988
ISBN: 978-0-06-156741-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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