A warm story of heritage, and the anxieties and rewards around change.
A young Irish immigrant to the United States adapts her traditions to a new land.
In mid-19th-century Ireland, Jack is a “sly spirit,” a prankster, deterred from entering a house by a carved turnip face lit by a glowing coal placed in the window. Lila and her two younger siblings journey with their Ma to join their Da in an unnamed American city, ca. 1850. The urban landscape is very different from their green fields, and the younger children are anxious about maintaining traditions around Halloween (an Irish festival import). Ma assures Lila that she’ll still “bake colcannon and barmbrack” (though as the recipe at the end confirms, colcannon is not baked). But, alas, there are no turnips to be had. At an open-air market, Lila quickly finds a friend, olive-skinned Julia—and an idea for a turnip substitute. She explains Irish Halloween to Julia, inviting her to participate. Julia explains the edibility of pumpkin seeds (and says that the stringy pumpkin “guts” can be turned into pie, though actually, they can’t). The younger children dress in sheets to scare Jack away (trick-or-treating will develop later). There is no recipe for barmbrack, a sweet Irish tea bread, more complicated than colcannon. The appealingly simple but realistic illustrations, featuring light-skinned, redheaded Lila and her family, are alight with autumnal color and replete with details of tenement life.
A warm story of heritage, and the anxieties and rewards around change. (history, recipe) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780807566633
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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