A creative story with a sound message: If at first you don’t succeed, ask a friend for help.
Even if you can’t draw, you can still tell a good story—with a little help.
Told as a doleful and humorous monologue that often directly engages readers, the book begins with several unillustrated pages and a lament that the unseen narrator is very bad at drawing despite lots of practice. The narrator includes a stick figure animal drawn with markers as well as a forest of pine trees (“The only thing I know how to draw…but that’s because it’s basically a scribble”) as evidence of their poor artistic ability. The narrator does have other skills, such as making the best cookies. But being bad at drawing means the narrator can’t bring to life their imagined adventure about “a mouse named Bailey who rides a half-cat half-bird named Catbird, and how they save the mouse kingdom from invading wand-wielding dragons!” What’s worse, the narrator has several talented friends who can draw hot air balloons, cats, birds, and dragons—wait! Perhaps the narrator can exchange cookies for illustrations. This artwork begins with basic, childlike drawings, then shifts to monochromatic, portfolio-worthy scenes by the friends. Readers then see polished thumbnail sketches and, finally, a fully rendered and colorful spread worthy of a great graphic novel. Adding to the fun, several friends of the author contributed their talents: Jessixa Bagley, Armand Baltazar, Anna Bond, Travis Foster, Tillie Walden, and Ethan Young. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A creative story with a sound message: If at first you don’t succeed, ask a friend for help. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-38578-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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