Urban oddities aplenty, spiffily presented in a format large enough to spread out on the floor for group viewing.
A car trip into and then back through a busy city gives a young cat plenty to see.
Printed on oversized stock stiff enough to allow open spreads to lie flat, Schamp’s cityscapes teem with offbeat details. There are pedestrians who look like they stepped out of a Richard Scarry title (sharp-eyed viewers may even catch a sign for “R. Scarry St.”), vehicles shaped like animals’ heads, and buildings constructed from repurposed items like a thermos bottle and a ruler. Largely ignoring his passenger’s steady stream of questions and comments, Otto’s dad maneuvers their small car through increasingly dense traffic all the way to the car wash on the last page. Here the thoroughfare loops, signaling a rotation of the entire volume so that the previously upside-down top half of each illustration is now right side up. The two travelers now negotiate new (or sometimes the same) neighborhoods, parks, building sites and traffic circles on the way out. Sly references to classic movies, pop musicians (“Mumford & Son” reads the sign on a work truck), and artists like “Pablo” and “Andy” may keep attendant grown-ups amused along the way.
Urban oddities aplenty, spiffily presented in a format large enough to spread out on the floor for group viewing. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84976-167-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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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Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names...
A lad finds a big red dragon in his basement and wisely seeks expert advice about its care and feeding in this epistolary episode.
Young Alexander’s missives (there are no cellphones, nor parents, in sight) are mostly paraphrased rather than shown, but each response comes as a small note folded into a pocket that’s been printed and shaped like an envelope: “Douse it in water right away!” writes panic-stricken fire chief H.Y. Drant; find it a large house or castle, advises B. East of World Animal Welfare; “fatten it up,” suggests Angus Teak the butcher (“Look forward to [eating, scratched out] meeting your dragon”) with sinister relish. Boy and dragon have wonderful times together, but the ultimate realization that dragons really don’t make good pets leads the narrator to follow the written advice of best friend Hillary (“the wisest person I knew”) and set it free. The later arrival of a slightly burned picture postcard in the “post” reassures him that the dragon won’t be forgetting to keep in touch. The human figures in Yarlett’s cartoon illustrations are either white or have their heads cut off at the page top. With the exception of the pasted-on postcard from the dragon at the end, all of the correspondence is removable and thereby losable.
Yarlett takes poor advantage of the format, as readers see only half of the correspondence, but the premise and punny names add some appeal. (Novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-818-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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