Cramped page design aside, an appealing first exposure for younger readers that highlights the story’s comedy over its...
An abbreviated version of the best-ever cautionary tale about the hazards of reading too much (among other things), played for laughs and matched to comical caricatures for illustrations.
Lathrop covers a select few of the original’s high spots in his plainly told paraphrase. Looking hilariously lanky and cross-eyed in Davis’ loosely drawn and colored cartoons, the bookish Don sets out in too-small armor to seek knightly glory. He chooses an oblivious peasant girl as his Dulcinea (“because dulce means ‘sweet’ in Spanish,” the reteller helpfully notes) and mounts Rocinante (“rocín means ‘old nag,’ and ante means ‘before,’ signifying that his horse used to be an old nag but wasn’t one anymore”). With his wise fool neighbor, Sancho Panza, as witness, he charges off to battle a windmill, a herd of sheep, a hapless wineskin and a cage of sleepy lions. Though buck-toothed and dopey of aspect, Sancho Panza gets his own chance to shine as he earns a bag of gold escudos judging several legal cases before Quixote is at last unhorsed by a concerned friend and agrees to take a year off from questing.
Cramped page design aside, an appealing first exposure for younger readers that highlights the story’s comedy over its satire and sentiment. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-94256658-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: LinguaText
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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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
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