Yea, Bridget.
The author of Boodil, My Dog (1992) offers another of her offbeat stories.
This one, a shaggy-wolf tale about a milquetoast turned commander-in-chief of a pack of wild carnivores, has just the right measure of topsy-turvy, oddball humor. Bridget is a little fraidy cat: she doesn’t like to pet dogs or jump over mud puddles or muck around with worms. She toes the straight-and-narrow when it comes to the daycare teachers’ directives. Then she goes and gets lost on a field trip into the forest, even though she was doing just what she was told. Next thing you know, she’s deep in the purpling woods of dusk, and sets of yellow eyes are peering at her from behind trees. They turn out to belong to a pack of wolves, but wolves of a different stripe. They truck to Bridget’s every order—don’t ask why, just enjoy watching as she puts them through a series of drills disguised as games, playing catch-the-pine cone (until one of them chokes), climb-the-trees (they’re not too good at getting down), and hospital (they like being scratched behind the ears). They even like her mud-and-blueberry pie, which is just what they need before hitting the hay (after a visit to the “pee trees,” that is). Next morning, they direct her out of the woods and back to her daycare center. Who’d have thought it: wolves, a girl’s best friends. Lindenbaum’s comical, off-center art offers a sight never before seen in American picture books: wolves peeing on trees. And the text offers another rarity: droll and ironic humor for children.
Yea, Bridget. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2001
ISBN: 91-29-65395-9
Page Count: 24
Publisher: R&S/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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