This ambitious flight to Neverland crashes and burns from the get-go.
The vastly abridged text runs to quick summaries and paraphrased lines like “Take a right after the second star and then go straight until morning!” and accompanies cartoon-style illustrations replete with small figures that fly, gesticulate, pop into view or otherwise move at a touch. Those and a font toggle and vowel highlighter on every page are about the only features that work well, however. The page turns are balky, pausing the audio narration (offered in four languages, plus a self-record option), as are many of the textual features. An "explain to me" tab at the bottom highlights selected words; tapping on them will (sometimes) trigger an automated pronunciation and open explanatory windows that are more or less helpful. Touching "following," for instance, brings up the baffling "going before"; if readers notice that the "opposite" tab at the bottom of that pop up is highlighted, they might deduce that it is an antonym for the word that they wanted explained. Sweeping “fairy dust” across any screen from a pot at the bottom cuts off the narration. In the art, Neverland’s stereotypical Indians are joined on other pages by glimpses of a spear-carrying African and an Arab with a rifle. Sophisticated animations are wasted on an app that is still several major updates short of mediocrity. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Chocolapps
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
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
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