Light scrapings of pirate lore are delivered by two children dressed to the hilt for their roles and leading a ragged but distinctly nonfearsome crew.
Billy and Belle are playing pirates at the beach. Transformed into swashbuckling buccaneers by the flip of a half-page, they proceed to offer ingenuous disquisitions on the nature and history of piracy (“Did you know many pirates steal from other people because they are very poor?”). They also cover piratical dress, behavior, shipboard tasks and lingo, followed by a spot of smoky but nonviolent plundering. Then it’s time to go ashore for a quick chantey, a matching game that encourages drawing lines between pirate heads and hats, and a set of review questions (“What’s the leader of a pirate ship called?”). The text isn’t much more than inconsequential ballast (“It is considered bad luck for girls to be on board a pirate ship. That’s why girl pirates dress up as boys”). Nevertheless, the cleanly drawn, brightly hued cartoon illustrations—climaxed by a double-gatefold cutaway view of a capacious ship crewed by cheery idlers—sail along airily enough to keep budding buccaneers entertained.
A lubberly addition to the fleet, kept afloat by its pictures. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60537-135-1
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Clavis
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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