The man in the moon—Moon Man—"curled up in his shimmering seat in space" yearns to Join the fun on earth. He catches the tail of a passing comet which frightens the night creatures as it crashes and brings soldiers speeding to defend the earth (and the ice cream man to sell to the spectators). The pale, soft creature in the crater is called an invader and thrown in Jail. One night as he wonders at his cruel treatment, the Moon Man notices that his left side has faded. "Why, I must be in my third quarter," he thinks happily. Every night as the moon grows thinner, so does he, until he is able to squeeze through the bars of his window. But his freedom is brief: chased by the police again, Moon Man comes upon an ancient Castle where a long-forgotten scientist is perfecting a spacecraft to reach the moon. Realizing that he can never live peacefully, on earth, Moon Man agrees to be the first passenger. Now that the space-craft has been launched successfully, Herr Doktor receives his delayed recognition; now that he has satisfied his curiosity, the Moon Man remains "ever after curled up in his shimmering seat in space." The contrast between the Moon Man, a foreshortened Uncle Fester, wistful and appealing and immaterial, and the stridency and stupidity of his tormentors' is exploited by the bright, galloping illustrations, as effective as any Tomi Ungerer has done. This has some of the sting of Dr. Strange-love—but tenderized, the contemporary charisma of Where the Wild Things Are: it's great.
Pub Date: March 1, 1967
ISBN: 0714855987
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1967
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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