Slightly creepy, funny and fun.
A boy receives a stuffed animal that he really doesn’t like—and it’s not hard to see why.
Koala arrives in an exciting, striped gift box, but still, Adam pulls faces and insists, “I don’t like Koala.” His parents don’t understand, but readers will. Koala doesn’t look soft or friendly, and he’s alarmingly mouthless. When Adam wakes up in the morning, Koala’s tiny claws are pressing into Adam’s cheek. It’s too bad that Santoso uses strabismus (in which one eye’s focus doesn’t align with the other’s) to portray the cold, yellow stare of Koala’s “terrible eyes.” Hijacking strabismus, a real-life condition, to indicate danger or symbolize creepiness is a distinctly questionable choice. Otherwise, the tale is hilarious, especially Adam’s (unsuccessful) attempts to banish Koala. At bedtime, “Adam puts Koala away. Away is a lot of different places”—inside a saucepan, atop the fridge, behind a plant and in a purse. Like that fabled cat, Koala always comes back. Even an intentional abandonment trip—over hills, around rocks, among trees—doesn’t work. Meanwhile, clever artwork shows that Adam may not have traveled as far as he claims. Santoso’s sly pencil illustrations, colored digitally in a mostly blue, gray and brown palette, resemble animation with shading and texturizing lines. The end features a twist and a closing line worthy of Sandra Boynton’s But Not the Hippopotamus (1982).
Slightly creepy, funny and fun. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0068-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even children who, like William, are "switched on like a light" when bedtime rolls around will drift off as the "train that goes to tomorrow" fills up with drowsy travelers: "Teachers and jugglers, sacks, cats, and packages, piglets in baskets and babies in bundles." William's fellow passengers have exaggeratedly wide middles and tiny extremities, as if viewed in a funhouse mirror, but the distortion is more comic than eerie, and suits the illustrations' curves and slanting perspectives to a "Z." Each car features a different arrangement of picture and words: sometimes text runs around the outside, sometimes it separates two-thirds from the rest, occasionally it rests on top of the illustration, and once it is even in the smoke of the train in a full-bleed spread. The train starts up at last; William cuddles close to his mother, listening to her heart and closing his wide eyes. Here they are flanked by a swooping train on the track, as the seat becomes a pasture. The engineer in his nightgown and stocking cap stands at the throttle as the train is "filling the world with billows of steam, soft see-through clouds that turn into dreams." Then suddenly it's coming into the station beneath a rising sun. A truly memorable ride, this ticket to dreamland will be good for many repeated trips. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-38437-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
A hapless goldfish becomes an undersea victim. Staring in fascination at his goldfish in its bowl, a "naughty little boy" hatches an "evil plan." He dumps the fish into the toilet bowl, and, lickety-split, the little fish lands in the big ocean. There it's eaten by a big fish, which is eaten by a bigger fish, which is eaten by a great big fish, which is caught by a big plump fisherman and ultimately ends up as fish and chips on the plate of the smiling "naughty little boy"—who later has a narrow escape from a big hungry whale. Robertson's ink-and-watercolor illustrations are full of cheeky dark humor and resemble portraiture in their depictions of sea life, which should fascinate young readers; one priceless picture shows a cross-section, both above- and underground, as the goldfish travels through the plumbing to the ocean while the boy sits on the toilet. But sentence-fragment text and repeated use of the phrase "naughty little boy" seem to parody the very issue that the author purports to present. Swimmy is still the gold standard. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84507-929-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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