A message to savor, delivered with a light touch and contagious glee.
If possessions don’t bring joy, what good are they?
With unfeigned, unreserved delight, a child imagines all the things they might do with a chance-found rubber band. “This is my rubber band!” they proclaim. Not only can the child keep it for themselves, but they can wear it, bundle up future love letters or “all the bad people in the world,” drive off invading aliens, fly away to visit distant lands, and much else besides. This leads to ruminations about how everyone has or is forever searching for things to keep and value—big thoughts that suddenly come to an end when the rubber band breaks. Again humorously plumbing philosophical depths just hinted at by a brief text and minimally detailed art, the author of The Boring Book (2019) and There Must Be More Than That! (2020) takes readers on a journey that illuminates both a child’s fertile imagination and our own understanding of what does, or should, matter in life. This small, cute child—their delicately drawn face, like those of their family and others in the pictures, left uncolored—shows a healthy sense of priorities, too, as after a quiet moment of surprise, they leave the broken rubber band behind to search out a new spark for their dreams and adventures: “Mommy! Mommy! Can I have this paper clip?” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A message to savor, delivered with a light touch and contagious glee. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-79721-492-4
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Some readers may be weirded out by the art; more will find Zebedee’s sudden change of heart forced and artificial.
Heavy contrivance and clumsy language sink this French tale of a small, indeterminate animal searching for a lost toy.
Frightened and desolate after the prized red balloon he calls “Ball” sails off into the night, Zebedee gets help tracking it down from an owl. He predicts that, “as we search hard for Ball, / You will make not one but ten friends in all!” In Philipponneau’s informally carved wood engravings the dark forest is anything but comforting, being eerily lit first by the owl’s huge red eyes, then by a similarly glowing thicket of red flowers, a bunch of wild strawberries and the apples in a tree. None turns out to be Ball, but the lights lead in succession (with the “ten friends” line repeated each time) to two doves, three snails and four worms. The narrator abruptly concludes that Ball can live its own life, because with ten newfound buddies “everything is alright [sic]. / Zebedee is no longer afraid of the night.”
Some readers may be weirded out by the art; more will find Zebedee’s sudden change of heart forced and artificial. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-2-7338-1942-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Auzou Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
Ultimately, since Chuck ends up smartly eschewing the pants at book’s end, the title even ends up seeming like a misnomer.
A beginning reader with a silly story that may or may not hold up to interrogation about anthropomorphic animals and story logic.
Big Chuck is a woodchuck who enjoys playing with other backyard animals such as a chipmunk, mice, a rabbit, a raccoon and a chickadee. They play, running and climbing about until Chuck spies a rag doll on the ground and inspects its clothing. He decides he wants the doll’s pants for himself and tries to squeeze into them. The others are obviously correct when they tell him that he is too big and the pants are too small, but Chuck ignores their protests and tries to run and climb about, just as before. Humorous watercolors capture the physical comedy of the scenes, and he remains determined to wear the pants until his girth makes them burst at the seams, with text reading “Pop! Rip!” Depending on readers’ suspension of disbelief, it’s either funny or confusing that on the next page Chuck covers his backside in embarrassment as the other animals look away. None of them is wearing clothing, and he was likewise Chuck-naked before donning the pants, so the internal logic of the story seems a bit off.
Ultimately, since Chuck ends up smartly eschewing the pants at book’s end, the title even ends up seeming like a misnomer. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3066-6
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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