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
With hand-colored photos of grave children holding, sitting on, or clambering over rocks, Christian (Chocolate, A Glacier Grizzly, 1997) poetically suggests picking up pebbles to see if they are skipping rocks or scraping rocks, wishing rocks or worry rocks, or perhaps just rocks with marvelous things in or under them. Lember (The Shell Book, 1997) adds muted but natural-looking tints to soften the lines in her woodsy, idyllic outdoor scenes. Like Meredith Hooper's Pebble in My Pocket (not reviewed), this suggests to children the rewards of taking closer looks at these most commonplace of natural objects. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-239339-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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