As enticing as a piper’s song and twice as alluring to the eye.
Dionysian excess meets its match when rats and pipers come to play.
In this Hamelin, before the onslaught of the rats, the adults revel so unceasingly (confining their children to their rooms as they do) that when the rats do invade, you couldn’t wish them on a more deserving populace. Ample attention is spent on the terror the rodents bring, until at last a piper, akin in looks to one of Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers, offers his services. When he is denied payment for a job well-done, the piper returns to take the town’s children with him into the mountains. Sweetest in tone when the children are the focus, the images here are rendered entirely in evocative reds, blues, grays, and blacks. The rats are true threats, swarming and snarling, as in a beautiful silent image of them savoring a “poison as if it were candy.” Moody, dreamlike images suffuse the pages: a lavish, grotesque feast, red wine spilling from a glass like blood, the rats infesting a Christmas tree so that they look like extra baubles. Alas, there is an occasional disjoint between words and images, as when the text declares that the story is set in 1283 alongside images of the all-white cast sporting clothing best suited to the 1950s and ’60s. This just adds to the surreal feel of this accessibly gruesome Pied Piper tale.
As enticing as a piper’s song and twice as alluring to the eye. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-89955-767-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little Gestalten
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Will leave readers as happy as a pig in mud.
It’s good to embrace change.
Although an unseen narrator attempts to tell an accustomed version of “The Three Little Pigs”—here named Alan, Alfred, and Alvin Albert—their younger sister, Alison, wants to get in on the action because she’s a natural storyteller. The narrator grudgingly allows Alison to tag along, but her added bits of flavor and the unexpected personalities of her brothers soon send the story off its traditional tracks and into hilarious hijinks. For example, Alan’s love of building allows him to design a functional house made of plastic drinking straws, Alfred’s stick house is actually constructed by Alan because Alfred’s clearly a star and not stage crew, and Alvin’s shacking up in a pumpkin behind Cinderella’s castle because he’s…not the crispiest piece of bacon on the plate. Alison’s quick thinking leads the brothers to be one step ahead of the wandering wolf. When the narrator hits their limit, a conversation with Alison proves that collaboration can lead to unexpected but wonderful results. The story flows well, accompanied by energetic cartoon art, and the choice to color-code the speech bubbles of each character (and the text of the narrator vs. Alison) ensures readers will be able to follow the snappy dialogue. Those who love to make up their own stories will be inspired, and readers who march to the beats of their own drums will be delighted. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Will leave readers as happy as a pig in mud. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3243-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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