There’s plenty of yuck-factor silliness, and the penultimate spread, of the family uniting for “cleanup hour,” is very...
Dirty dishes, food and leaves on the floor, mice, nasty insects like big-eyed flies, spiders, mice, a butterfly or two—what is a tidy little girl to do?
Federica’s dad is busy with his telescope. Federica’s mum (wearing rollerblades) is occupied with her laptop and her painting. Her little brother seems perfectly content, but the “buggy, buzzy mess” amusingly pictured in the first double-page spread really bothers Federica. She goes to the park for respite. It’s full of unusual creatures: a goat and some sheep. There are also raccoons, an owl, a toad, and, of course, insects. It’s there that the young white girl thinks of a plan that will transform her messy house. There is a hint of the Yiddish folk tale familiar from It Could Always Be Worse, by Margot Zemach (1977). Federica brings all the park animals into her home, but here the animals are not meant to crowd out the humans but rather to eat the flies and mice, clean the kitchen, and consume the long grass. The resourceful girl succeeds in making her house fit for habitation again and releases the animals back to the park. The loose ink-and–Adobe Photoshop illustrations are a riot, milking the absurdity for all it’s worth. At the end, the mother rollerblades as she washes the floor, with baby brother riding the mop.
There’s plenty of yuck-factor silliness, and the penultimate spread, of the family uniting for “cleanup hour,” is very inviting. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-968-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
