bookshelf

THE EXPERIMENTS OF DOCTOR VERMIN

Name: THE EXPERIMENTS OF DOCTOR VERMIN
Author: Tim Egan
ISBN: 0-618-13224-4

by Tim Egan & illustrated by Tim Egan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 2002

bookshelf

Egan (A Mile From Ellington Station, 2001, etc.) ventures onto William Steig territory with an offbeat Halloween tale about a porcine short-order cook discovering the true meaning of courage. When his car breaks down one stormy October night, Sheldon nerves himself to approach a spooky, nearby mansion—and suddenly finds himself strapped to a table, blown up to four times normal size by a cackling mad scientist bent on world domination. Then he’s hurriedly ejected into the dark woods because the mind control part of the transformation doesn’t take. As evil Dr. Vermin can turn himself into an inoffensively small mouse at will, Sheldon is almost discredited when he leads concerned neighbors back to the mansion. But the plucky piggie unmasks the villain in the nick of time, then tests a potion that restores him and other victims to normalcy. In simply drawn settings, Egan poses stubby-limbed human and animal figures with small but expressive facial features that reflect the tongue-in-cheek tone. Like Sylvester, Pearl, Caleb, or, for that matter, Dr. De Soto, Sheldon learns that inner stuff is more important than outer form or size. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2002

ISBN: 0-618-13224-4

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
DODSWORTH IN TOKYO
by Tim Egan ; illustrated by Tim Egan

- BOOK REVIEW
DODSWORTH IN ROME
by Tim Egan & illustrated by Tim Egan

- BOOK REVIEW
DODSWORTH IN NEW YORK
by Tim Egan

bookshelf

RAPUNZEL

adapted by Rachel Isadora & illustrated by Rachel Isadora ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2008

bookshelf

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your dreads! Isadora once again plies her hand using colorful, textured collages to depict her fourth fairy tale relocated to Africa. The narrative follows the basic story line: Taken by an evil sorceress at birth, Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower; Rapunzel and the prince “get married” in the tower and she gets pregnant. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and tricks the prince, who throws himself from the tower and is blinded by thorns. The terse ending states: “The prince led Rapunzel and their twins to his kingdom, where they were received with great joy and lived happily every after.” Facial features, clothing, dreadlocks, vultures and the prince riding a zebra convey a generic African setting, but at times, the mixture of patterns and textures obfuscates the scenes. The textile and grain characteristic of the hewn art lacks the elegant romance of Zelinksy’s Caldecott version. Not a first purchase, but useful in comparing renditions to incorporate a multicultural aspect. (Picture book/fairy tale. 6-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-399-24772-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
DO I HAVE TO WEAR A COAT?
by Rachel Isadora ; illustrated by Rachel Isadora

- BOOK REVIEW
MY DOG LAUGHS
by Rachel Isadora ; illustrated by Rachel Isadora

- BOOK REVIEW
I JUST WANT TO SAY GOOD NIGHT
by Rachel Isadora ; illustrated by Rachel Isadora

bookshelf

BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

bookshelf

Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)