Though the factual information about Grant Wood is scanty, this fanciful story represents the power of friendship and the...
Loosely based on the life of Grant Wood, this is the story of the artist’s search for inspiration and his discovery that home—and a cow named Tillie—was all he needed to be happy.
Soft watercolors beautifully depict the rolling hillsides of rural Iowa, where Tillie is so content to live on a farm with her friend Grant that “at milking time, Tillie gave Grant gallons of frothy goodness.” He wants to be an artist, though, dreaming of being taken as seriously as French painters. Leaving Tillie behind, Grant travels to Paris in 1920. Smith’s illustrations nicely capture the Parisian art scene with broad strokes and open spaces, spaces that Wood occupies uneasily, with a beret and goatee that look pasted-on, an outsider who realizes that he needs to go home to paint what he loves. Meanwhile, a forlorn Tillie feels abandoned by her friend and walking companion, wasting away until they’re reunited. The book’s typeface is oddly small for the expansive illustrations and storyline, and it’s sometimes hard to read against the backdrop. A child might wonder why the artist’s eyes are invisible behind his eyeglasses, unlike the bespectacled man in Wood’s famous American Gothic, painted at the end of the story.
Though the factual information about Grant Wood is scanty, this fanciful story represents the power of friendship and the role of the familiar in the creative process. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55498-446-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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