Dahl's elemental fix on kids' consciousness gets this off to a surefire shivery start, with orphan Sophie, awake st the witching hour, snatched from her bed by a giant hand and carried off to a land of giants clear off the last page of the atlas. But Sophie's kidnapper is really friendly (hence BFG for Big Friendly Giant) and does not eat humans as she had feared, but occupies himself gathering and dispensing dreams. He also expresses himself in a mixed-up, cutesy manner that is simply tiresome. Nearby, however, are nine still-bigger giants who do eat humans ("I is a nice and jumbly giant" but "human beans is like strawbunkles and cream to those giants," says the BFG)—and it's to protect the world from them that Sophie and the BFG hatch a scheme: He will mix a dream from his collection and send it to the Queen of England to apprise her of the threat; then, when she awakens, Sophie will be on her windowsill, and the BFG waiting in the garden, to convince her that the dream is true. And so it is that we find Sophie and the BFG breakfasting with Her Majesty . . . and the BFG violating all decorum, even to letting fly a glumptious whizzpopper (kids would call it a fart). Nevertheless the Queen is impressed and sends off her military men, who, under the BFG's direction, rope the sleeping giants and haul them back by helicopter to be imprisoned in a giant pit. This is all told in Dahl's higgledy-piggledy home-made manner, which is rarely disarming here despite the pandering. And it's hard to find the bumble-tongued BFG endearing.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1982
ISBN: 0374304696
Page Count: 219
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday.
Animal parents declare their love for their offspring in alphabetical order.
Each page displays an enormous capital letter, one line of verse with the keyword capitalized, and a loving nonhuman parent gazing adoringly at their baby. “A is for Always. I always love you more. / B is for Butterfly kisses. It’s you that I adore.” While not named or labelled as such, the A is also for an alligator and its hatchling and B is for a butterfly and a butterfly child (not a caterpillar—biology is not the aim of this title) interacting in some way with the said letter. For E there are an elephant and a calf; U features a unicorn and foal; and X, keyed to the last letter of the animal’s name, corresponds to a fox and three pups. The final double-page spread shows all the featured creatures and their babies as the last line declares: “Baby, I love you from A to Z!” The verse is standard fare and appropriately sentimental. The art is cartoony-cute and populated by suitably loving critters on solid backgrounds. Hearts accent each scene, but the theme of the project is never in any doubt.
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-2095-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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