“Even though I’m small, green and slimy, I can still be a good principal, can’t I?” So hopes P.S. 88’s responsible, much-loved Mr. Bundy, afflicted by a bumbling magician’s spell in this ribbit-tickling companion to The Principal’s New Clothes (1989). Calmenson sticks to the original folktale’s broad outlines: Bundy offers to fetch a baseball from the pond if his stunned students will accept him as the substitute Principal while the real Mr. Bundy is “away,” and though they make their promise with fingers crossed, they’re forced to stick to their bargain. Brunkus endows both him and his young charges with a lively range of expressions and postures before, during, and (finally) after his transformation. Even on four legs, Bundy is the very model of a benevolent father figure, spending more time in halls and classrooms than in the office. But when he finally regains his old, dapper—no Captain Underpants he—shape not by being thrown against the wall, or, as in sappy modern versions, being kissed, but by taking a baseball on the noggin, students and teachers welcome him back joyfully. Lucky is the school with a Principal like Mr. Bundy. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-37070-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
A trite, knock-off sequel to Jumanji (1981). The “Jumanji” box distracts Walter Budwing away from beating up on his little brother Danny, but it’s Danny who discovers the Zathura board inside—and in no time, Earth is far behind, a meteor has smashed through the roof, and a reptilian Zyborg pirate is crawling through the hole. Each throw of the dice brings an ominous new development, portrayed in grainy, penciled freeze frames featuring sculptured-looking figures in constricted, almost claustrophobic settings. The angles of view are, as always, wonderfully dramatic, but not only is much of the finer detail that contributed to Jumanji’s astonishing realism missing, the spectacular damage being done to the Budwings’ house as the game progresses is, by and large, only glimpsed around the picture edges. Naturally, having had his bacon repeatedly saved by his younger sibling’s quick thinking, once Walter falls through a black hole to a time preceding the game’s start, his attitude toward Danny undergoes a sudden, radical transformation. Van Allsburg’s imagination usually soars right along with his accomplished art—but here, both are just running in place. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-25396-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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