Channeling Aesop through Charles Dickens, Egielski (Locust Pocus! A Book To Bug You, 2001, etc.) brings together two yo-yo–wielding urban rodents from different walks of life, and pits them against a gloriously piratical feline hoodlum. Slim, an orphaned rat living on the mean streets, meets Jim, a mouse from a well-off family, on a rooftop. Together, the two foil a jewel heist contrived by Buster, the one-eyed cat; fall into the river, where Slim saves Jim; and meet a frog that drives them to Jim’s home. As they grow up together, they share yo-yo tricks—a rock the baby, a rock the baby and then throw it out of its cradle, and a rock the alien baby on the launchpad—and see their friendship survive a tough test, eventually growing up to become professional yo-yo stars. The Caldecott Medalist has outdone himself in the art, depicting expressions, body language, and details of the narrow-laned streetscapes with even more lapidary precision than usual. He clothes his all-animal cast in mix-and-match articles from the past two centuries of fashion and captures in subtle ways the loyalty that cements this unlikely interspecies friendship. A heavily battered typeface adds to the generally raffish air of this droll, action-packed (and very silly) modern fable. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-028352-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
Going produce shopping with Freymann and Elffers is more of a casting call than a trip to the supermarket, for they use fruits and vegetables to display a wide range of emotions. Children and their keepers will be astonished to discover how closely the wrinkles, bends, and creases in produce can mimic human feelings. The text is fairly direct, asking questions to make children think about their emotions: “When you’re angry, do you pout? Whine? Cry? Scream? Shout?” The ridges of a red pepper, with eyes of dried peas, convey the pout, while other fruit demonstrate the rest of the query. These full-color photographs communicate most of the information; even preschoolers will be able to tell a happy orange from a glum one, and adults will smile to see an onion crying. The organic qualities of the produce are used to charming advantage, e.g., the bend of a green pepper makes the perfect overbearing profile of a bully, while a hollowed-out orange gives just the right depth to an opened-mouthed howl. Fun, and useful—what child would not be encouraged to talk about being shy when there is a cantaloupe that admits to exactly the same thing? (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-439-10431-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Although it appears to Herbie the duck that he’s been displaced in the affections of his sidekick Lottie (Lottie’s New Beach Towel, 1998) by Dodo, a new neighbor with an exotic accent, he needn’t fret. Dodo assures him in the end “zat you are ze apple of her eye.” Tall, mauve, elaborately crested, Dodo looks intimidatingly elegant next to Herbie’s dumpy figure in Mathers’ small, delicate paintings, but she puts on no airs, and the newly-minted trio of friends is last seen motoring companionably off to a meal of meatloaf and gingersnaps. A brief, understated take on a common worry—not confined to childhood—with enlivening touches of wit and charm. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82014-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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