Otherwise, distinguished both as natural history and work of art.
Jenkins’ splendid array of beetles will surely produce at least one budding coleopterist.
The colors and patterns of this ubiquitous insect (one out of four creatures on the planet is a beetle, Jenkins tells readers) are fascinating, as are the details about the various adaptations that beetles have made over millennia in response to their environment, diet, and predators. “Perhaps the innovation that has been most helpful to the beetle is its pair of rigid outer wings.” Beautiful book design and a small but clear freehand-style type contribute to readers’ appreciation of the elegant structure and variety of these creatures. Deep, bright hues in the torn-and–cut-paper–collage illustrations set each beetle with its own singular pattern and colors against generous white space. Actual-size silhouettes allow the detailed, larger illustrations to be matched with a realistic appraisal of each beetle’s dimensions. A list of the several dozen featured beetles along with their Latin names and their principal geographic locations appears on a two-page opening at the back. Only a couple of quibbles: The author’s claim that without the dung beetle “the world’s grasslands would soon be buried in animal droppings” begs for a little further explanation; and the absence of a bibliography seems like an oversight.
Otherwise, distinguished both as natural history and work of art. (Nonfiction. 7-12)Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-68084-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story would have a real chance on its own merits without these really appallingly bad episodes. (Fantasy. 8-12)
Of course this will sell—as an E.B. White item and one that the publishers are pushing hard, playing it for an adult as well as a juvenile sale.
And that is where I think it really belongs, along with Robert Lawson's books, which reach children chiefly through adults. Thurber was another, but more justifiable on the score of a nice quality of whimsy, which Stuart Little—for me at least—lacks. This seems to me pseudo-fantasy, synthetic, and lacking the tenderness that makes a story such as Wind In The Willows wholly the children's own. Undertones and overtones of this story of a mouse in a human family are unjuvenile on all counts. The central story follows the make-believe as Stuart, complete with hat, cane, pin-striped trousers, and a stout heart, embarks on his small odyssey—a hairbreadth escape in a window shade (victim of a jealous cat), high seas exploits in Central Park, near tragedy in a garbage scow. Then comes the complete flop of the schoolroom episode and the romance.
The story would have a real chance on its own merits without these really appallingly bad episodes. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1945
ISBN: 978-0-06-026396-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1945
PERSPECTIVES
Sweetly magical.
Seven-year-old Grace knows a great many words, but she can’t bring herself to string them together on paper.
In her eyes, this gift is unique to her writer aunt, Lily, with whom she spends her afternoons. Lily, however, has found herself bereft of ideas, and out of desperation she puts out an ad for a writing assistant. Enter Rex: a dog whose apparent oddities cleverly conceal a magic that, while unexplained, is quietly remarkable. Rex inspires Lily almost immediately, and the two find happiness in their new partnership. Similarly, Rex inspires Grace to turn her words into stories. Her reservations will feel familiar to any fledgling pen-pusher: not knowing how to write what she feels, how to start, or how to press on. Those reservations extend into her everyday life, as it fills and changes in ways she never foresaw, but her small network—loving (if busy and often absent) parents, the wondrous Rex, Lily and her writing group, the encouraging teacher Ms. Luce, and steadfast, unflappable Daniel, Grace’s best friend—remains by her side throughout her writer’s journey. MacLachlan spins from simple words an enigmatic, gentle, but perhaps too succinct tale. While Grace’s first-person narration doesn’t quite ring true to her young age, (a lack of contractions makes the prose oddly formal), charmingly scratchy pencil sketches scattered throughout mitigate this alienating effect. The only physical descriptions to be found are attached to the animal characters.
Sweetly magical. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294098-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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