Smooth writing, appealing pictures, and (mostly) mild action create a pleasant enough package, but it’s still likely to be a...
Following series opener Digby O’Day in the Fast Lane (2014), Hughes and Vulliamy’s canine duo are off on another adventure, this time featuring a classy seaside hotel, a secret passage, a singing starlet with a taste for shiny jewels, and a pair of (feline) cat burglars.
As before, there’s an old-fashioned feel to both text and pictures. When Digby tells Percy about their upcoming trip, the smaller dog is troubled because the only dinner jacket he owns “belonged to my Uncle Gus [and it’s] moth-eaten and has a couple of gravy stains….” Soon enough they are on the road, and the plot rolls along briskly, if coincidentally, from a near miss with a large, dark car (license plate “Bad 2”) to their ignominious arrival at the hotel and serendipitous rescue of a fellow beach walker. Next come the glamorous entrance of Peaches Meow, a robbery at the hotel, and, finally, a visit to a local home that includes a trip down through a tunnel to a smugglers’ cave. Vignettes, single-, and double-page illustrations, created with pencil, ink, and digital collage, provide clues and amplify the mild humor. Emerging readers may nonetheless struggle with some of the sophisticated vocabulary and the unfamiliar setting.
Smooth writing, appealing pictures, and (mostly) mild action create a pleasant enough package, but it’s still likely to be a bit twee for some readers. (map, authors’ note, quiz, first chapter of Digby O’Day Up, Up, and Away) (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7445-8
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Series fans won’t be disappointed, but young readers and listeners who know only the original ditty may find this a touch...
Having eaten pretty much everything on land in 13 previous versions of the classic song, Colandro’s capaciously stomached oldster goes to sea.
Once again the original cumulative rhyme’s naturalistic aspects are dispensed with, so that not only doesn’t the old lady die, but neither do any of the creatures she consumes. Instead, the titular shark “left no mark,” a squid follows down the hatch to “float with the shark,” a fish to “dance with the squid,” an eel to “brighten the fish” (with “fluorescent light!” as a subsequent line explains), and so on—until at the end it’s revealed to be all pretending anyway on a visit to an aquarium. Likewise, though Lee outfits the bespectacled binge-eater with a finny tail and the requisite bra for most of the extended episode, she regains human feet and garb at the end. In the illustrations, the old lady and one of the two children who accompany her are pink-skinned; the other has frizzy hair and an amber complexion. A set of nature notes on the featured victims and a nautical seek-and-find that will send viewers back to the earlier pictures modestly enhance this latest iteration.
Series fans won’t be disappointed, but young readers and listeners who know only the original ditty may find this a touch bland. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-12993-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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