A comforting book about a cat, likely to appeal to the very young.
Author-illustrator Lee (Pop! Pop! Bam! Bam!, 2013) follows one cat through his lonely life until his owner arrives in this repetitious picture book for the very young.
A playful gray cat goes through a series of emotions and actions over the course of his day. He hides behind a fire hydrant waiting to pounce on a mouse, showing that he’s hungry. He hides beneath a dresser, expressing fear. An image of an empty chair reveals why the cat is sad. By bathing, drinking and taking a nap, the cat manages to pass the time until, at last, he’s happy in his owner’s arms. The simplistic illustrations aren’t always fully colored, but they’re kid-friendly nonetheless. Some illustrations are stronger than others; the hiding cat looks more anti-social than afraid, and the dressed-up cat (to express the concept of “fancy”) has a strangely shaped face compared to other pictures. But the image of him crawling through a yoga mat (to be “sneaky”) is a perfect representation of how felines can find the oddest places to squish themselves and amuse their owners. Some words may be challenging for newly independent readers but will be great for sounding out with parents (such as “mischievous”); others are excellent examples of action words (“slurping”). The repeated phrase “one cat,” which begins every page, will comfort independent readers by providing a recognizable phrase on each page and encourage lap readers to chime in. The opening synopsis suggests a deeper back story (the cat was a starving stray, and that’s why it begins the story hungry and afraid), but this never quite comes through in the pictures. Instead, young readers will latch onto the emotions, recognizing that they also sometimes feel lonely or afraid or silly.
A comforting book about a cat, likely to appeal to the very young.Pub Date: March 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495952760
Page Count: 36
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blume's latest novel begins like many of her personalized, single-problem scenarios, with 15-year-old Davey's father shot to death by robbers at his 7-Eleven store in Atlantic City. Davey can't function for weeks, and it is largely for her that her emotionally and financially stranded mother accepts shelter in Los Alamos with kind Aunt Bitsy and her physicist-husband Walter. Once there, Davey's outsider reactions to Bitsy, Walter, and Los Alamos add dimension to her grief and her recovery. True, we experience no culture shock too strong for Blume's smooth readability; there is nothing subtle about the irony of Bomb City's bland security and weapons designer Waiter's overprotective posture; and Waiter's elitist ugliness is overdone in one violent confrontation with Davey. Also, Davey's chaste but warm relationship with a nice young man she meets in the canyon, plus the coincidence of his father's dying at the hospital where Davey volunteers as a candy-striper, are on the cute romantic level. Nevertheless Davey's lonely struggle to come to terms with the killing, her everyday conflicts with her well-meaning but aggravating aunt and uncle, her impatience with her mother, who finally breaks down and then withdraws from the family, her scorn for the "nerd" physicist Mom dates on her way to recovery, her concern for a high-status but alcoholic school friend, and her assessment of the social structure at the Los Alamos high school—all this takes on a poignancy and a visible edge we wouldn't see had Davey (or Blume) remained in New Jersey.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1982
ISBN: 0385739893
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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