An engaging celebration of ambition and the imagination with magical illustrations.
A young woman achieves her dream of becoming a magician with the help of her rabbit in this children’s book.
Holly Foster, a brown-skinned, freckled, curly-haired woman, loves performing magic with her white rabbit, Buddy. “I wish we could do this every day,” she tells her companion after a children’s show. In a flashback to Holly’s childhood, readers see that she has loved magic from a young age, admiring her Uncle Bob, a magician. When told girls “can only be a magician’s assistant” by a boy in her class, Holly ignores his comment, pulling a coin from behind his ear. Uncle Bob gives her Buddy and, when he retires after an “Indian Rope Trick” gone awry, leaves her his magician’s trunk. Buddy wants to help Holly become a full-time, professional magician. He reads Uncle Bob’s books and plans a way for her to perform an exceptional trick at the “Night of the New Magicians” event. Holly creates a perfect illusion, allowing her to realize her dream. While the story of a supportive anthropomorphic rabbit and a talented magician works well, Maret leaves readers with some key questions. There are no answers as to why Holly struggles to become a full-time magician and why there are so few female practitioners. And her day job, hinted at, is never described. At one point, Buddy leaves their apartment to enlist neighborhood animals for assistance, but the final trick he and Holly execute involves no extra creatures. When Holly performs her fancy illusion, Buddy initially waves the wand, making it seem as though she is functioning as the assistant, a role she rejected as a child. These quibbles aside, the author’s accessible text and calm, repeated refrain about Buddy’s “rabbity way” of helping will appeal to young would-be magicians. Behrend’s oil pastel illustrations, which feature a diverse array of magicians and audience members, match the book’s tone. They capture the whimsical, beautiful finale in a way that feels like magic. Behrend also sneaks in images of the covers of her title The Survivor Tree (2017) and Maret’s The Cloud Artist (2017) in a classroom where Holly performs a trick.
An engaging celebration of ambition and the imagination with magical illustrations.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-937054-76-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: The RoadRunner Press
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably...
A lad finds a penguin on his doorstep and resolutely sets out to return it in this briefly told import.
Eventually, he ends up rowing it all the way back to Antarctica, braving waves and storms, filling in the time by telling it stories. But then, feeling lonely after he drops his silent charge off, he belatedly realizes that it was probably lonely too, and turns back to find it. Seeing Jeffers’s small, distant figures in wide, simply brushed land- and sea-scapes, young viewers will probably cotton to the penguin’s feelings before the boy himself does—but all’s well that ends well, and the reunited companions are last seen adrift together in the wide blue sea.
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably with this—slightly—less offbeat friendship tale. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24503-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dog lovers and young Dr. Moreaus alike will guffaw.
Split pages allow mixing and matching sections of 10 purebred canines.
Forget cockapoos and labradoodles—flipping the three segments here back and forth makes for some truly unlikely hybrids: “I’m a Bulldog— / Yorkshire Terrier— / Great Dane mix”; “I’m a Komondor— / Greyhound— / Poodle mix”; “I’m a Dachshund— / Shar-Pei— / Dalmatian mix.” Ball (Flip-O-Storic, 2011) cranks up the drollery with a set of big, handsome pooches drawn and colored to set off their distinctive characteristics, posed naturalistically against plain yellow backgrounds, and looking up or out with doggy devotion. She also adds the occasional tail-pulling puppy, silly hat, or other comical side business. In addition to the identifying captions, Garczynski contributes a table of descriptive information about each breed at the beginning. This includes to-scale silhouettes that are helpful since all of the interior dogs are rendered the same size so that the transitions more or less match up. (Although the Yorkie’s stubby forelegs still make a peculiar mismatch with the lanky hind limbs of the Great Dane.) Also, each sturdy strip features a “personal” observation, such as the Dalmatian’s “I’m known for my distinctive spots. If I open my mouth, you’ll even see spots in there.” Aside from the note of condescension in the Shar-Pei’s claim that its tongue “was once thought to ward off evil spirits,” these last are at least innocuous and sometimes informative.
Dog lovers and young Dr. Moreaus alike will guffaw. (Novelty picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1310-5
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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