Cooper, who's been alternating between standup comic Kimmey Kruse's adventures in Chicago (Funny as a Dead Comic, 1993) and down-home sagebrush mysteries (Dead Moon on the Rise, p. 247), gets a chance to fire both barrels at once when a hurry call to her ailing grandfather's bedside sends Kimmey home to Port Arthur, Tex. Aside from his longtime estrangement from Kimmey's grandmother, Me- Maw, there's nothing wrong with Paw-Paw's broken leg that time and better cooking than Kimmey's won't fix. But the family reunion among Me-Maw's relatives, the Foret sisters, isn't so benign: Leticia DuBois, with whom Me-Maw's been feuding for 45 years, has a fatally allergic reaction to a wasp sting. When Kimmey finds a jar containing two dead wasps in Leticia's car, she tells the police Leticia was murdered, but they're just as hostile as Leticia's son Willard, the hunkiest man Kimmey's ever met. Between the pressure she's getting from Barbara Sue Blanton, the wild child corseted into Bible-thumping by her charismatic Baptist preacher husband, and from Sal Pucci, the police detective who's followed her, uninvited, down from Chicago to look into the case, ingratiate himself with her relatives, and whisper lewd somethings into her ear, the big question isn't whether Kimmey can find Armand DuBois, the wastrel who broke his engagement to Barbara Sue to marry Leticia—and then reportedly ran off with one of the Foret girls- -it's how many days Kimmey can survive the engorged bosom of her family. An affectionate portrait of Kimmey's wacky East Texas relatives: a short take too smart to overstay its welcome.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11438-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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