Knee-slappers on every page for tenderfoot readers and writers.
From “lamebrain” to “feet of clay,” a heaping handful of English idioms, similes, metaphors, and other colorful turns of phrase.
Using Street’s There’s a Frog in My Throat! 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me (2003, illustrated by Loreen Leedy) as a model, Street and Brace group their entries by body part and pair each to a literal-minded alternative or explanation: “She knit her brows. She frowned in concentration”; “I’m hip. I know what you mean.” Brace jumps up the humor with spreads of demonstrative cartoon figures—including animals, animate internal organs, and even zombie bunnies—whose actions and comments are intended to further clarify the meanings. And they usually do, though the vomiting ticker by “heartsick” misses the boat, and having a lad shout “Holy cuss!” next to “potty mouth” is a yellow-bellied decision. If a few miscast homophones like “back to the drawing board” and “head of lettuce” tiptoe in, there are still lips zipped, buttoned, and sealed; fingers crossed, pointed, butter, light, and worked to the bone; hearts whole, half, soft and hard, black, cold, gold, and more to enrich both spoken and written tongues. Not to mention zombie bunnies biting off heads and picking brains.
Knee-slappers on every page for tenderfoot readers and writers. (index) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2135-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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