Elegantly droll and extravagantly French, from the fittingly unpossessive title to the "shiny cuirass" M. Racine dons defensively with his cavalry uniform. Because "One morning, alas! three times, alas! he found all his pears gone" — they were his pride and his joy, not for selling or sharing; now he's lying, soon sleeping, in wait for the thief. . . upon whose arrival "Our avenger jumped to his feet and grabbed his saber. 'Sapristi!'" And voila the beast — with "long, socklike ears. . . on both sides of an apparently eyeless head," and a "shaggy, mangled mane" topping what Ungerer (forked tongue in cheek) calls a "drooping snout" but distends mistakably like an unconfigurated phallus. Honi soit. . . and all that (see particularly said proboscis as emblematized fourfold on the back cover), but the quite corrigible homme de guerre — dressed to kill yet extending a nice macaroon on the tip of his blade in a tentative gesture of friendship — is the very picture of a straight-man: "'More delicacies of this sort and it could be tamed,'" he reflects, and the ensuing picnic is the start of something magnifique continually outdoing itself. "'I lost my pears but found a companion,'" muses the bespectacled old man sporting a red fez and puffing on a hookah; he's relaxing before the gramophone while his most curious of pets ("It was especially fond of cookies, chocolate, and ice cream") sits soulfully sipping through a straw. After communing on sliding pond, cycle, and swing, they end up at the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and what happens there shall not here be disclosed since it crowns the glory of the rest. . . (the French would dub it formidable). What meets the eye is at once exuberant and economical; both pictures and text are more and less sophisticated than they seem. This is funny and bright and immediate on lots of levels, a sort of rare tour de farce for the whole family.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1971
ISBN: 0374405700
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971
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
The greening of Dr. Seuss, in an ecology fable with an obvious message but a savingly silly style. In the desolate land of the Lifted Lorax, an aged creature called the Once-ler tells a young visitor how he arrived long ago in the then glorious country and began manufacturing anomalous objects called Thneeds from "the bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees." Despite protests from the Lorax, a native "who speaks for the trees," he continues to chop down Truffulas until he drives away the Brown Bar-ba-loots who had fed on the Tuffula fruit, the Swomee-Swans who can't sing a note for the smogulous smoke, and the Humming-Fish who had hummed in the pond now glumped up with Gluppity-Glupp. As for the Once-let, "1 went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds./ And I biggered my money, which everyone needs" — until the last Truffula falls. But one seed is left, and the Once-let hands it to his listener, with a message from the Lorax: "UNLESS someone like you/ cares a whole awful lot,/ nothing is going to get better./ It's not." The spontaneous madness of the old Dr. Seuss is absent here, but so is the boredom he often induced (in parents, anyway) with one ridiculous invention after another. And if the Once-let doesn't match the Grinch for sheer irresistible cussedness, he is stealing a lot more than Christmas and his story just might induce a generation of six-year-olds to care a whole lot.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1971
ISBN: 0394823370
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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