After his best friend dies, Monkey learns from Little Chameleon how to remember his beloved Hippo “happily ever after.” The friendship between Monkey and Hippo is well established as one between an older and younger animal, the older one filling the younger one’s days with stories. When Hippo realizes his life is nearing the end, he tries to explain to Monkey that no one lives forever and that Monkey will make new friends and hear new stories. Bartlett’s broad-stroked, color-saturated paintings of the main characters add vibrancy to the sweet text that gently allows Monkey to grieve while picturing him nearly filling the page with his tears and then drying his eyes and making friends with Little Chameleon. This same richly colored, face-front style of artistic rendering can be seen in Over in the Grasslands (2000), where similar animals frolic and loom almost larger than life. Even the end papers contribute to the setting. They introduce a light-filled water garden with active goldfish by day and conclude with a dark, shadowy water garden with partially hidden goldfish. While straightforward in approach, the message is an important one: when Monkey tells A Story for Hippo, it becomes a story for everyone. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-26219-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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