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WINGWALKER

Name: WINGWALKER
Author: Rosemary Wells
ISBN: 0-7868-0397-5

by Rosemary Wells & illustrated by Brian Selznick ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

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This big-hearted, Depression-era, American fairy tale seems to come alive out of a former generation like a well-worn family yarn. Reuben’s perfect childhood in Oklahoma disintegrates with the arrival of the Dust Bowl that deprives his parents of their jobs. This presents his father, a teacher of ballroom dance, with a thrilling opportunity to become a “wingwalker” with a traveling county fair, an opportunity that his wife strongly opposes. Physically small, Reuben himself has a reputation for being a bit of a sissy whose nickname is “shrimp-boats.” He can barely stand to watch his father execute his ballroom steps on the plane wing, let alone think of accompanying him. But the folks of the fair take Reuben to their hearts and give him encouragement. When his father wants to take Reuben up on the wing with him, the Human Snake advises, “Hold your father’s hand.” This enables the boy to stand hand-in-hand in the air with his proud father. Wells’s prose is spare but has both richness and freshness of simile and image, e.g., “a drilling rig pumping away like a big iron grasshopper.” If some details (the purchase of a new Studebaker) strain credibility, it is true to a form in which repeated telling establishes confidence in the rightness of a story. Selznick has a lock on the iconography of history as it intersects with dreams. As if keeping a promise to the story’s symbolic metaphor, his paintings are full of sky, airplanes, and upward-looking faces. Handsomely designed, the glossy stock and neat, consistent framing lend serenity and a sense of looking into stopped moments in a vintage album. A small disappointment is the final painting, to which readers will turn eagerly, and which depicts the father, not in his trademark “best black suit,” but in far less dapper attire. (Fiction. 6-10)

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-7868-0397-5

Page Count: 80

Publisher: Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE KINDERGARTEN
by Rosemary Wells ; illustrated by Rosemary Wells

- BOOK REVIEW
IF YOU BELIEVE IN ME
by Rosemary Wells ; illustrated by Rosemary Wells

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BUNNY, BIG GERMS
by Rosemary Wells ; illustrated by Rosemary Wells

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THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY WHISKERS

From the Adventures of Henry Whiskers series , Vol. 1

by Gigi Priebe ; illustrated by Daniel Duncan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 2017

Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.

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The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.

In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).

Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)

Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Aladdin

Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION | CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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TWENTY-ONE ELEPHANTS

by Phil Bildner & illustrated by LeUyen Pham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004

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Fact and fiction dovetail neatly in this tale of a wonderfully resolute child who finds a memorable way to convince her father that the newly-finished Brooklyn Bridge is safe to cross. Having watched the great bridge going up for most of her young life, Hannah is eager to walk it, but despite repeated, fact-laced appeals to reason (and Hannah is a positive fount of information about its materials and design), her father won’t be moved: “No little girl of mine will cross that metal monster!” Hannah finally hatches a far-fetched plan to convince him once and for all; can she persuade the renowned P.T. Barnum to march his corps of elephants across? She can, and does (actually, he was already planning to do it). Pham places Hannah, radiating sturdy confidence, within sepia-toned, exactly rendered period scenes that capture both the grandeur of the bridge in its various stages of construction, and the range of expressions on the faces of onlookers during its opening ceremonies and after. Readers will applaud Hannah’s polite persistence. (afterword, resources) (Picture book. 7-10)