The art may draw more attention than the stories, but it’s agreeable fare for sharing on a lap.
Eight familiar tales decked out in sumptuous visual finery.
The contents are a mixed bag of retold Aesop, Andersen, and Anonymous, plus a much-abridged version of “Beauty and the Beast” credited to Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Like Gustafson’s similarly large-format Classic Fairy Tales (2003) and Classic Bedtime Stories (2014), the focus is on elegant styling and luxuriant detail—in the illustrations, at least. Though the typeface is ornate and attractive on the generously margined pages, the stories are recast in unaffected language, sometimes even informally: the Ugly Duckling is “sort of a gray color,” and his hatchling nestmates peep, “Look at the big one. He’s goofy-looking!” Likewise, when the Little Red Hen asks “Now, who will help me eat the bread?” and gets a chorus of “I will!” she responds, “Well, I wouldn’t count on it!” In the paintings, most of the figures go about in European peasant or Renaissance fancy dress, but even unclothed barnyard fowl are splendidly turned out. “Beauty” takes place, mostly, in sumptuous candlelit surroundings as is customary, and aside from being a pug, “The Emperor Who Had No Clothes” resembles Louis XIV. Dogs and other common animals, most but not all anthropomorphically posed, make up most of the cast in five entries; the humans in three others and glimpsed elsewhere all seem to be white.
The art may draw more attention than the stories, but it’s agreeable fare for sharing on a lap. (source note) (Illustrated folk tales. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-57965-704-8
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Artisan
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina...
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up.
Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields.
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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