Reminiscent of early Sesame Street titles for its mediocre writing and fuzzy, low quality illustrations, this house tour will not only be meaningless to readers unfamiliar with the Wallace and Gromit feature film and shorts, it’ll leave even confirmed fans struggling to make out what’s going on. Chatty commentary fills dialogue balloons as the bumbling window washer/inventor and his silent, thunderous-browed canine partner squire viewers from room to room, making oblique references to events in the films, extolling various nonworking Rube Goldberg-style inventions like the Bully Proof Vest and the Turbo Diner while trying to serve tea and (of course) cheese. Meanwhile, squads of mice contrive to nab every bit of the latter. The pictures, which are drawn rather than composed with the engaging claymation figures of the films, have a flat, scribbly look, and several times feature abrupt changes of scene or dissolves that cut across the middle—techniques that work on the screen but are visually confusing on the page. Stick with the DVDs. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: May 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-7434-6783-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Pocket UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
From Johnston (An Old Shell, 1999, etc.), poetic phrases that follow a ghostly barn owl through days and nights, suns and moons. Barn owls have been nesting and roosting, hunting and hatching in the barn and its surroundings for as long as the barn has housed spiders, as long as the wheat fields have housed mice, “a hundred years at least.” The repetition of alliterative words and the hushed hues of the watercolors evoke the soundless, timeless realm of the night owl through a series of spectral scenes. Short, staccato strings of verbs describe the age-old actions and cycles of barn owls, who forever “grow up/and sleep/and wake/and blink/and hunt for mice.” Honey-colored, diffused light glows in contrast to the star-filled night scenes of barn owls blinking awake. A glimpse into the hidden campestral world of the elusive barn owl. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-981-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
The gastronomical oddity of eating winged and many-legged creatures is fleetingly examined in a superficial text that looks at animals and people who eat insects. Bugs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are gobbled up by a shrew, an aardvark, a bear, a gecko, and others. The rhyme scheme limits the information presented; specificity about the types of insects eaten is sacrificed for the sake of making the rhyme flow, e.g., a mouse, a trout, a praying mantis, a nuthatch, and a bat are repeatedly said to eat “bugs” or “insects” in general, rather than naming the mayflies, moths, or grubs they enjoy. An author’s note explains her choice of the word bugs for all crawly things; an addendum takes care of other particulars lacking in the text. Long’s exacting pen-and-ink style lends a naturalistic perfection to this visual playground of the insect world, enhancing this glimpse of vital link in the food chain. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-88106-271-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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