A girl who is beautiful within becomes beautiful without, but her mean stepsister cannot follow her path.
An Iranian-born author uses a “Toads and Diamonds” base for her original tale. Shiraz, Cinderella-like when her father dies after marrying a woman with a daughter, goes to find a red ball of yarn (left by her own mother) when it blows into a strange neighbor’s garden. She meets an old woman, who, curiously, asks Shiraz to further destroy the neglected house and garden, and then to cut her tangled hair short, but the compassionate girl disobeys and makes everything perfect. The old lady gives her the wool and directs her to bathe in two pools. When Shiraz returns, her stepfamily is amazed by her beauty. The stepmother insists that Monir visit the woman, but the stepsister cannot muster Shiraz’s goodness. She follows the instructions literally and destroys everything. After greedily immersing herself in the pools more times than directed, she comes home bedraggled and ugly. Mother and daughter demand to understand this very different result, and Shiraz reveals her secret. The gouache paintings with their bold color blocks and scribbly lines provide a picture of a timeless Tehran and a girl who is a whirlwind of energy.
Despite a little too much emphasis on its moral, a satisfying story of just rewards for just actions. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84686-929-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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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 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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