Forced of animation and perfunctory of plot but well-enough stocked with interactive features and challenges.
Slacker elf classmate in tow, a young student witch takes final exams in this involved set of number, memory and word games.
Receiving lengthy instructions from teacher Miss MacSpider as she goes, the little witch negotiates five tests with readers’ help. These include coloring in a paint-by-matching-numbers portrait and navigating a “concentration”-type maze through an ogre’s stomach. Witch and readers are also quizzed on general knowledge (“What animal roars?”) by a grumpy “genealomagic” tree. Ultimately, she passes by bringing her “cuddly toy” bat to life and then turns a rude classmate into a toad. An optional multivoice audio track in English or French is animated enough to compensate, mostly, for a text that only appears a few lines at a time and for the figures’ twitchy undulations, fixed expressions and unnatural gestures in the cartoon illustrations. Each screen features multiple pans and dissolves, plus any number of incidental tap-activated transformations or sound effects. The tests in the tale (and more in a separate “Surprise” section) are available at three selectable levels of difficulty (the question above is rated “Medium”).
Forced of animation and perfunctory of plot but well-enough stocked with interactive features and challenges. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: SlimCricket
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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