“Spectacular adventures” is a hippo-sized overstatement in this story of Sophie, a dreamy hippo who’s hungry for action. She loves to draw, cook and collect comics, but more than anything, she wants to soar in the sky on a skateboard and leave her nay-saying herd behind to “sink or swim.” Even her best friend Sebastian, a bird, advises her to give up her dream. In time, Sophie fills her secret sketchbook with an action-packed comic starring Superhippo and Wonderbird that ends up amusing the grumbling hippos and, ultimately, satisfying Sophie’s I-gotta-be-me yearnings. Perhaps the message here is that the key to contentment is finding a passion that’s not preposterous. Unfortunately, the story seems contrived and lacks internal logic, its meanderings are occasionally hard to track and the abundant references to the largeness of hippos (sometimes in a big fat font) grow tiresome. The soft, color-saturated, often patterned gouache illustrations—pleasingly diverse in format and occasionally presented as vertical spreads—are childlike and appealing, but still don’t earn the book its puffed-up title. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-50756-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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