Youngsters who have read the earlier stories of the young Australian aboriginal Wurrin and his encounters with the spirit-world, The Ice Age Is Coming (1977) and The Dark Bright Water (1979), will perhaps want to follow him through to the climactic encounter with death; but this is in every respect less successful than its predecessors—more amorphous (and less graphic), more fraught with portent (and less humanly appealing). In terms of characters, it's barely a story at all: at the outset, Wurrin is married to the water-girl Murra, and aware that he may not be able to keep her; at the close, she has broken free of the Yunggamurra, and thus his. In between he is called upon again by Ko-in, who first made him a hero, to deal with "a fiery-eyed thing that calls itself death"—but is, it develops, only a "little bit" of the real thing. Via spirit-journeys—heavily dependent on references to the earlier books—Wurrin at last has his innings with the fearsome Wulgaru in the cave of the dead; and, in saying "I am, I am," he breaks free. Even Wrightson's sonorous, emotive writing cannot make his more than a paper contest, however, In almost excluding the casual, pregnant exchanges that gave the other books their vitality, and virtually the whole element of personality (human or extra-human), she leaves readers in a ponderous fog of myth and elusive "meaningfulness."
Pub Date: April 17, 1981
ISBN: 0345332504
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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