Egan’s dry-as-tinder, cornball humor reverberates through his latest tale of strange doings in a small town. The setting is a quaint, half-timbered village, the citizenry all long-eared, long-snouted blue hippo-like creatures, and the protagonist is Feathers, a colossal parrot who drops in one day, literally, from space. Sedrick Van Pelt is the first to make contact with the giant bird, who has a bottomless hunger—“Bread. I love bread. Any kind of bread. Pumpernickel, rye, whole wheat, sourdough. Any kind”—as well as a stumbling, bumbling manner that reduces certain structures in the village to rubble. Baking bread and lots of it, constantly mending their battered dwellings, the townsfolk get a little tired of the admittedly good-natured Feathers. When a hurricane sweeps Feathers away, the townsfolk demonstrate a form of grief: “He had become a wonderful, if somewhat destructive, part of their lives, and they missed him very much.” In the last couple of pages, Egan (Burnt Toast on Davenport Street, 1997, etc.) turns the story on its head, all very smoothly and convincingly: He will elicit smiles from listeners. The riffs on (and great fondness for) human foibles are magnified and made poignant by the daintily lumbering residents; the little burgs of the transporting artwork are welcoming idylls. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-85808-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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