SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

Name: SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Author: Tak Bùi
ISBN: 978-1-77049-279-0

by Tak Bùi & illustrated by Tak Bùi ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012

Too big for back-seat entertainment or to tuck into a parental backpack as a portable means of distraction—but rewarding to...

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In a challenging workout for Where’s Waldo? fans a Canadian cartoonist offers 82 teeming scenes in pairs that are identical only at first glance.

Presented side by side on tall, floppy pages bound at the top, each pair of paintings has 20 small differences for sharp-eyed viewers to identify. They feature dozens of, usually, tiny rabbits in human dress swarming through city or country settings in various seasons. These differences range from an airport worker’s warning sign here that is blank there and changing numbers in an arithmetic problem on a chalkboard in front of a “school” of marine creatures to a swarm of diminutive Santas constructing a “Trojan Rudolph” with a nose that’s glowing in only one view. Mercifully, Bùi describes all the changes in every pair at the end. Smaller hands will have difficulty wrestling with the ungainly format, but the figures and action are depicted with fine-lined exactitude, and there’s plenty of stage business and visual humor to keep even browsers uninterested in playing the intended game amused.

Too big for back-seat entertainment or to tuck into a parental backpack as a portable means of distraction—but rewarding to pore over in roomier situations. (Picture book. 6-9)

Pub Date: May 8, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-77049-279-0

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Tundra Books

Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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BOOKMARKS ARE PEOPLE TOO!

From the Here's Hank series , Vol. 1

by Henry Winkler ; Lin Oliver ; illustrated by Scott Garrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2014

An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.

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Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.

Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.

An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CASE OF THE MISSING TADPOLE
by Henry Winkler ; illustrated by Dan Santat & by Lin Oliver

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THE CASE OF THE STRANGE SPLASH
by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver ; illustrated by Dan Santat

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HOLLYWOOD VS. THE GALAXY
by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver ; illustrated by Ethan Nicolle

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MUD PUDDLE

by Robert Munsch & illustrated by Dušan Petričić ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2012

Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...

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The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.

Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.

Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)