Foolish fantastic fun with enough goofy details to warrant repeated reads.
All manner of monster and heroes are welcome at the Hotel Fantastic, but beware Soror Horribilis!
The Hotel Fantastic is a getaway like no other; there are rooms for every type of being: underwater rooms for mermaids, giant rooms for giants, anti-gravity rooms for ETs. There are even “sky rooms” for those who fly. The rooftop pool is a perfect place to play for pirates and giant squids. There is an all-night ballroom in the basement and an infirmary that offers such upgrades as “supersonic rocket-feet.” The security force is second to none, but even they can’t handle the fiery breath, the knobby knees, the deadly stare of the particularly nasty specimen of Soror Horribilis! Gibault’s bright, digitally rendered cartoon illustrations are full of robots, aliens, superheroes, monsters, and humor. It’s hard to distinguish the guests from the staff; but that makes perfect sense at the wide-angled visual punchline at the close, which shows a human girl shaking a superhero doll she has just grabbed from the “hotel.” She’s yelling (at her brother, the narrator), “I told you a million times not to put YOUR toys in MY dollhouse.” Both kids are pale-skinned redheads.
Foolish fantastic fun with enough goofy details to warrant repeated reads. (Picture book. 2-7)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77138-992-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
This magical wisp of a story has an imaginative message for both planners and improvisers.
Julia decides to pack up and move her House for Lost Creatures, creating a host of problems with unexpected results.
Julia has taken in a cacophony of lost creatures: dwarves, trolls, and goblins, a singular rarity of a mermaid, and a patchwork cat, among others. But now, the house feels ready for a move. As the ghost starts to fade and the mermaid languishes, Julia puts her plan into action—packing books and stacking boxes. The move quickly turns into a series of catastrophes. Trying to retain the facade of control, Julia is dismayed to see her plans making things worse. Knowledge of the previous title, Julia’s House for Lost Creatures (2014), is a helpful introduction, as Hatke turns the solution of the first book into the problem for this one. With skillful pacing, the story has messages for both planners and creatives. The problems seem beyond resolution, keeping readers in gleeful suspended tension. While the first book introduced readers to the gnomish folletti, a hedgehoglike ghillie comes to a dramatic rescue here. There are two disparate messages in one story: Kindness will be returned, and it is OK to not have a plan. Connecting them together are lush illustrations that stretch the mind and add details to mythic beasts. Julia presents white. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8.5-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 25% of actual size.)
This magical wisp of a story has an imaginative message for both planners and improvisers. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19137-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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