In a second solo outing as opaque as The Little Giant (2004), a pack rat with a huge collection of curiosities starts over after momentarily losing focus. Depicted as a small, ski-nosed rodent with sunken shoulders, Pius Pelosi slouches through city and country picking up oddly shaped roots and leaves, lost items and interesting bric-a-brac, until he’s filled all the shelves in a mammoth display hall. But after visitors complain that the collection’s oldest item, a plain pebble, is too ordinary, he throws it out, suddenly sinks into depression and gives everything away. Then one day he finds another pebble, and that rekindles his urge to collect. Readers might enjoy poring over the dozens of often inscrutable items on Pius’s shelves in the softly colored cartoons, but his emotional ups and downs seem puzzlingly arbitrary—particularly next to those of the notable young collectors in Marthe Jocelyn’s Hannah’s Collections (2000), Carey Armstrong-Ellis’s Prudy’s Problem and How She Solved It (2002), or, on a more rarefied but still comprehensible plane, Quint Buchholz’s Collector of Moments (1999). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-36343-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
With wordplay reminiscent of Margie Palatini at her best, Helakoski takes four timorous chickens into, then out of, the literal and figurative woods. Fleeing the henhouse after catching sight of a wolf, the pusillanimous pullets come to a deep ditch: “ ‘What if we can’t jump that far?’ ‘What if we fall in the ditch?’ ‘What if we get sucked into the mud?’ The chickens tutted, putted, and flutted. They butted into themselves and each other, until one by one . . . ” they do fall in. But then they pick themselves up and struggle out. Ensuing encounters with cows and a lake furnish similar responses and outcomes; ultimately they tumble into the wolf’s very cave, where they “picked, pecked, and pocked. They ruffled, puffled, and shuffled. They shrieked, squeaked, and freaked, until . . . ” their nemesis scampers away in panic. Fluttering about in pop-eyed terror, the portly, partly clothed hens make comical figures in Cole’s sunny cartoons (as does the flummoxed wolf)—but the genuine triumph in their final strut—“ ‘I am a big, brave chicken,’ said one chicken. ‘Ohh . . . ’ said the others. ‘Me too.’ ‘Me three.’ ‘Me four’ ”—brings this tribute to chicken power to a rousing close. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-47575-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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