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
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel.
In this Japanese import, the first in a long-running series to appear in English, two girls ride bikes through a forest—with stops for clover-blossom tea and jam sandwiches.
It’s such a benign wood that Chirri and Chirra—depicted as a prim pair of identical twins with straight bob cuts—think nothing of sharing both a lunch spot and a nap beneath a tree with a bear and a rabbit. Moreover, at convenient spots along the way there is a forest cafe with a fox waiter plus “tables and chairs of all different size” to accommodate the diverse forest clientele, a bakery offering “bread in all different shapes and jam in all different colors,” and, just as the sun goes down, a forest hotel with similarly diverse keys and doors. That night a forest concert draws the girls and the hotel’s animal guests to their balconies to join in: “La-la-la, La-la-la. What a wonderful night in the forest!” Despite heavy doses of cute, the episode is saved from utter sappiness by the inclusive spirit of the forest stops and the delightfully unforced way that the girls offer greetings to a pair of honeybees at a tiny adjacent table in the cafe, show no anxiety at the spider dangling above their napping place, and generally accept their harmonious sylvan world as a safe and friendly place. Doi creates her illustrations with colored pencil, pastel, and crayon, crafting them to look like mid-20th-century lithographs.
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59270-199-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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