Swain doesn’t really delve into her topic, but does provide a snappy general overview that is animated by O’Brien’s big, tongue-in-cheek cartoon illustrations. Opening with the rhetorical question “What is so funny about underwear?” she covers the subject chronologically, tracing the evolution of ancient breechclouts to modern disposable diapers, glancing at futuristic deodorizing fabrics, surveying ways that used undies are recycled, then closing with a timeline and a short list of “inside information” sources. The breezy text receives appropriately playful accompaniment from illustrations that depict women drifting from balconies to the floor, supported by parachute-like hoops, and union-suit–clad skaters on a frozen pond. The sense of fun, however, perhaps precludes an accurate rendition of the torture of corsets, indicated in the text but not reinforced by the images. Readers after a little more specific detail will find Kathy Shaskan’s How Underwear Got Under There: A Brief History (2007), illustrated by Regan Dunnick, a better fit—though Deborah Nourse Lattimore’s more-or-less work-safe pop-up, I Wonder What’s Under There? (1998) uncovers the basics better than any. (Informational picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8234-1920-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
A beguiling retelling of a 19th-century Lincolnshire tale that fairly dances with an impatience to be read aloud. Mouth-filling words dot this story, the context making them easily understood while taking away none of their mystery. Bogles and other horrid things live in the cracks and cinders and sleep in the fields in the old times, and at darkling every night folk walk round their houses with lights in their hands to keep the mischancy beings away. In autumn, “they sang hush-a-bye songs in the fields, for the earth was tired” and they fear the winters when the bogles have nothing to do but make mischief. As the year turns, they wake the earth from its sleeping each spring, and welcome the green mist that brings new growth. In one family, a child pines, longing for the green mist to return with the sun. Through the long winter she grows so weak her mother must carry her to the doorsill, so she can crumble the bread and salt onto the earth to hail the spring. The green mist comes, scented with herbs and green as grass, and the child thrives, once again “running about like a sunbeam.” The green, gold, brown, and gray of the watercolors show fields and haycocks, knobby-kneed children and raw-boned elders, a counterpoint to the rich text. (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90013-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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