A stellar addition to Larrick's many themed anthologies, with powerful illustrations that plunge the reader/listener into a mysterious, moon-washed world. The 34 poems, mostly from this century, come from such authors as de la Mare, Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Jarrell, McCord, Merriam, and Yolen, plus a few Native American and other traditional sources; they are artfully sequenced from a first poem about the deepening dark to a last two telling of the dawn; between are the moon, the Milky Way, nocturnal animals, and night in the city and on water, in wind and in storm. Ray's soft, dark acrylics, swirling with cloud, stardust, and mist, are extraordinarily sensitive to the texts. Some of his subtle touches are lovely: the moon seen through a moth's gossamer wings, stars mirrored in a stream, a stained-glass window reflected on a wet sidewalk. The text is effectively superimposed on blowing curtain, snowfield, fogbank, or cloud. Perfect, save for a flaw in the opening sequence when the moon rises where the sun has just set- -which is a pleasant visual conceit (also to be observed in Wiesner's Tuesday, 1991) but an astronomical impossibility. For an older audience than that of Larrick's When the Dark Comes Dancing (1983); a must. Fully indexed. (Poetry/Picture book. 7+)
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-21874-2
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
In this first of the Dragon Slayers' Academy series, Wiglaf, the put-upon sensitive son in a family of louts, heads off to school along with his faithful pet pig, Daisy. On the way, he meets a wizard who gives him a magic sword, although he has forgotten the magic words to make it work, and gives Daisy the power of speech (in pig latin). Once at the Academy, Wiglaf discovers that it's not all it's advertised to be, and his first chance to slay a dragon comes all too soon. This lightweight, amusing adventure rattles right along, without pretensions and with, given the series title, a resolution that cleverly avoids violence—Wiglaf slays the dragon with bad jokes. An entertaining confection. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-448-41727-8
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
After his grandmother gives him an old riding lawnmower for his summer birthday, this comedy’s 12-year-old narrator putt-putts into a series of increasingly complex and economically advantageous adventures. As each lawn job begets another, one client—persuasive day-trader Arnold Howell—barters market investing and dubious local business connections. Our naïve entrepreneur thus unwittingly acquires stock in an Internet start-up and a coffin company; a capable landscaping staff of 15 and the sponsorship of a hulking boxer named Joseph Powdermilk. There’s a semi-climactic scuffle with some bad guys bent on appropriating the lawn business, but Joey Pow easily dispatches them. If there’s tension here, it derives from the unremitting good news: While the reader may worry that Arnold’s a rip-off artist, Joey Pow will blow his fight, or (at the very least) the parents will go ballistic once clued in—all ends refreshingly well. The most complicated parts of this breezy affair are the chapter titles, which seem lifted from an officious, tenure-track academician’s economics text. Capital! (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: June 12, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-74686-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
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