A lighthearted suggestion that “When in Rome…” is a salutary approach anywhere in the world.
A comically misnamed Indian princess ruins a series of family vacations.
In Hong Kong the milk’s not right, in China the noodles are too bland, in Singapore the bed’s too hard, and the menagerie in Cambodia doesn’t measure up to the one back home. “Our delicate darling,” fret the princess’s royal parents—ordering the Royal Packer to add a cow, the cook, bedding, and lots of pets to the official baggage list. But when the princess’s demand for a personal elephant causes the overstuffed jetliner to burst, the queen puts her foot down: “NO MORE VACATIONS!” Kuriyan depicts the tantrum-prone princess and her comically dismayed entourage with a range of skin colors nearly as individual as the styles of their brightly patterned traditional dress. Along with such universal funny business as a dog lifting its leg in one chaotic scene and an elephant delivering a massive mound of poop in another, her rollicking cartoons feature sights from each locale. These range from glimpses of the Merlion fountain in Singapore harbor to one of the humorous cautionary road signs (“Don’t be a gama in the land of lama”) placed along the Ladakh region’s northern border. Impelled by boredom, the princess at last agrees to behave like “locals” in future outings and discovers that vacationing in Tibet is “actually quite fun!”
A lighthearted suggestion that “When in Rome…” is a salutary approach anywhere in the world. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-8-1819-0335-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Karadi Tales
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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