Fledgling readers will agree with Princess’ bemused comment: “This Land of Fake-Believe is crazy-cakes!” (Fantasy. 6-8)
Jones takes “The Three Bears” for a dizzy spin in this laff-riot series opener.
Searching for a midnight snack, Princess (first name) Pink (last name) falls through a portal in her refrigerator. On the other side, she meets friendly Mother Moose (a bull moose), then follows green-haired Moldylocks to check out the chairs, bowls and beds of the Wookiee-like Three Beards. Later, having previously hacked an unwanted, pink, fairy-princess dress into a “Cowboy Caveman” outfit suitable for disguising herself as a fourth Beard, she intrepidly returns to save her new friend from being boiled in a vat of chili. Being cast against both genre type and publishers’ convention, Princess likes “dirty sneakers, giant bugs, mud puddles, monster trucks, and cheesy pizza” far more than fairies, princesses or anything pink, and she also (for a wonder) has dark skin in the cartoon illustrations. The text is distributed in easily digestible blocks and dialogue balloons among simply drawn scenes of popeyed figures rushing hither and yon. Parents worried about this nonstop romp’s literary value will surely be appeased by the page of review and discussion questions at the end.
Fledgling readers will agree with Princess’ bemused comment: “This Land of Fake-Believe is crazy-cakes!” (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-63840-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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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