Monkey business allows young children to make a serious transition from early readers to chapter books.
As reading reluctance can build from the first stages of literacy, this debut title in a series of illustrated chapter books aims to hook both struggling and new readers. Clyde—rambunctious, a little mischievous and the epitome of the reluctant reader—often envisions himself as a monkey. On a school field trip to a science and history museum, he encounters two problems that lead to nonstop adventure. After bumping into a thief disguised as a museum guard, his gift-shop version of the Golden Monkey icon is switched with the real artifact. The boy also eats a scientist’s radioactive banana (it was blasted with a gamma ray), which enables his inner monkey to turn him into a real monkey. Traditional illustrated text turns to a graphic-novel format when Clyde accidentally and then on purpose turns into a monkey. Not even his brainy, no-nonsense twin sister, Claudia, can control Clyde’s monkey self as teachers and other school workers chase him through the school hallways. The action peaks when the thief shows up at school, pretending to be a substitute teacher and wanting his stolen Golden Monkey back. While this series doesn’t have aspirations to high literature, it does fulfill an important developmental reading need with high-interest humor and adventure. (Adventure. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-55977-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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