What to do when all the third- and fourth-graders are putting on a talent show but you don’t have a talent? That’s Clementine’s dilemma, and her mechanisms for escaping the talent show escalate into hilarity. Pennypacker once again demonstrates her keen insights into the third-grade mind with Clementine’s priceless observations of the world around her: “At journal writing I did my idea. When I was done writing, I curled my hand over my sentence as if it were too private to share. Which is how you get a teacher to come and look at it.” Clementine’s quest for a talent includes gluing beer-bottle caps to the bottoms of her sneakers; juggling her mother’s pocketbook, half-full coffee cup and her kitten, Moisturizer; and leashing her little brother as a prop. Even as Clementine’s antics escalate, the narrative avoids the pitfall of deteriorating into slapstick with the constant reminders of her essential humanity. Every kid will understand her desperate desire not to look like a fool in front of her classmates, and they will find her very talented solution—achieved with a little help from her principal—enormously satisfying. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7868-3870-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
An unsentimental but misguided rumination on death, illustrated with simple ink and colored-pencil line drawings of deceased pets and people—nearly all of the latter naked and, plainly, male. Veering off on occasional side jaunts to bring in ghosts, Mexican Day of the Dead customs, and the like, Stalfelt (The Love Book, not reviewed) races past death’s physical changes—“Flowers can get brown and dried out when they die . . . people usually get pale and a bit more yellow than normal”—and its most common causes, various views on what happens afterward, funerals, memorials, wills, and euphemisms from “bit the dust” to “happy hunting grounds,” then finishes with a sprightly rhyme. Though this may, as the blurb has it, make death “thinkable” for children, its sexist language (“People used to take their best things with them into the grave . . . they could even take their wife or horse . . .”) and derisive treatment of non-Christian views of the afterlife (“What if you became a hot dog???”) signal a less than sensitive approach to an already disturbing, unfathomable topic. (Picture book/nonfiction? 7-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-88899-482-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
Of the making of Caseys there seems no end, but here the illustrator of John Lithgow’s Remarkable Farkle McBride (2000) delivers the chestnut with such broad, satirical panache that only the dourest of spoilsports will be able to resist going along for the ride. From the rows of bowler-topped gents in the stands to the well-groomed hairs in Casey’s handlebar, every detail is both larger than life, and painted with crystal clarity. A mighty figure indeed, Casey strides to the plate with lordly assurance, casually takes two strikes, then gears up for the next pitch; Payne zeroes in on Casey’s suddenly-choleric face—steam blasting from his ears—then pulls back to depict a whiff so prodigious that the batter’s whole body disappears into a swirling blur. But a whiff it is, and a view of a deserted, muddy street captures the forlorn tone of the final verse. Finished off with a detailed account of the poem’s history, this may not supercede Christopher Bing’s Caldecott Honor–winning rendition (2000) for period flavor, but it does capture the episode’s epic scale and perfectly tuned melodrama. (Picture book/poetry. 7-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85494-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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