Heavy-handed in its environmental message but still enjoyable.
Kyu-chan, a mischievous Japanese water creature, is the last kappa because of a changing environment.
Folklore, a 19th-century story, an environmental plea, and a pourquoi story about kappamaki, a popular sushi roll, combine to make a clunky, overcrowded picture book that nevertheless still engages readers, especially those seeking a page-by-page bilingual text. Norihei, an ordinary farm boy, meets Kyu, a kappa away from his river too long, and saves his life by splashing him with water. They become fast friends, but Kyu’s family decides to move away because the “area is getting dangerous.” The humans are affecting the environment with their railroads and electricity, a trend that will cause Kyu’s kind to die out. Before leaving, the kappa gives the boy a magic talisman if ever Norihei needs help with water. Norihei grows up, marries, has a child, and starts a restaurant. When his baby falls into a stream, the grown man calls upon his old friend (looking very aged due to human disregard for clean water) for assistance. Norihei names cucumber-filled sushi rolls after him as a reward. “Cultural Notes” provide background information, along with a joke about kappas evolving into “ninja turtles.” The illustrations, mostly bordered rectangles set against handmade paper, combine elements of Japanese wood-carved prints with cartoonlike faces and great detail, showing both traditional agricultural scenes and industrialization.
Heavy-handed in its environmental message but still enjoyable. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-4-8053-1399-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tuttle
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
A worthy topic but no more than a discussion starter, as it’s too bland to make much of an impression on its own.
An earnestly lifeless infodump featuring a child with a spectrum disorder who occasionally misbehaves but, mirabile dictu, can play piano like a pro.
Looking about 10 years old in some of Inouye’s static suburban scenes and younger in others, Anthony is viewed by a sympathetic would-be friend. She models proper responses while explaining that he sometimes screams at loud noises, throws sand, seldom makes eye contact, flaps his hands when he’s happy and just doesn’t get knock-knock jokes. But one day, a grand piano arrives at Anthony’s house, and the narrator is astonished to find him confidently playing “a song I never heard before. Wow! I can’t do that,” she marvels. Children will come away from this with a little more awareness of some common behaviors associated with diagnoses of Asperger’s and similar disabilities, but such information is already widely available in less generic trappings, and Anthony’s musical ability—which springs from nowhere here—isn’t exactly typical.
A worthy topic but no more than a discussion starter, as it’s too bland to make much of an impression on its own. (afterword, with URLs) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61608-961-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
A refreshingly atypical exercise in waging peace, despite the tired “X vs. Y” scenario.
Argot issues nearly spark a brawl in this addition to the trendy “head-to-head mashup” genre.
These antagonists confront one another not on the base paths as in Mark Summers and Aaron Frisch’s Pirates at the Plate (2012) but on the dusty streets of Old Cheyenne. They square off after noxious Capt. Burnt Beard’s uncharacteristically civil “Be ye knowin’ where we’d be findin’ a fair scrub and a swish?” is greeted with an uncomprehending sneer by Black Bob McKraw and his band of rustlers—themselves “nastier than week-old chili, and twice as gassy.” It seems pirates don’t speak cowboy, and cowboys don’t speak pirate. Happily, the opportune arrival of Pegleg Highnoon, “the world’s only pirate cowboy,” literally clears the air as he insults both gangs in their respective jargons. Having found common ground (“Yes, it was their stench. But it was a start”), all head amicably for the town’s only bathhouse and saloon. Using muddy colors to provide an unwashed look, Barneda pits a scurvy crew of sea creatures led by an octopus against a posse of prairie critters headed up by a scowling bull. All are dressed in occupation-appropriate duds, including Highnoon (a generic-looking reptile presumably intended to be a marine iguana), who sports a mix of iconic gear from peg leg to Stetson.
A refreshingly atypical exercise in waging peace, despite the tired “X vs. Y” scenario. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-85874-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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