An insatiable desire for cookies, a dress-up trunk and a young girl’s purposeful imagination are at the heart of this ingenuous tale from Lewis. Cut off from cookies for an entire week after overindulging her baked-goodie habit, Florence exercises Machiavellian-like plots in an attempt to breach the cookie embargo. Her zany ideas, fueled in part by her pet monkey Arnold, will keep readers chuckling—and possibly taking notes. However, her resolute mom is not to be swayed and the opposing sides reach a treaty—chocolate-dipped bananas. For fellow cookie-deprived readers, Lewis includes a recipe for Monkey Bananas at the conclusion. Granström’s comical watercolor illustrations capture the fey, fanciful imaginings of the single-minded Florence and the wry exasperation of her mom. Blueprint-style diagrams—done in a young, wobbly hand—add to the comical flair. Good fun with a healthy message at its core, this is a tale both parents and their cookie-obsessed offspring can enjoy. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-439-68332-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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