An impressive, readable debut by a juvenile creator.
A 14-year-old author and illustrator describes an unscary encounter with bats in a picture book for emerging readers.
A South Asian girl stands at the foot of a tall set of stairs without handrails in a room with cobwebs. “Should I climb it?” she wonders. “Yes,” she decides, and marches up barefoot: “Squeak. Squeak.” Faced with a door, she opens it: “Creak, Creak.” In a shadowy room with purple walls, a rattan ladder leads to still more mysteries: an attic lined with cinderblocks and filled with dusty pottery—and some living animals hanging upside down from the rafters. The reveal of the titular bats is comedically undramatic: “Skreech. Skreech.” Fleeing, she tells her sari-wearing grandmother, who is unimpressed: “Yes, I know dear.” A final page pulls back to show the reader that the character is a drawing in a sketchbook. Puranik wrote this short book when she was 8, and her art shows architectural details and cooking implements that suggest a South Asian setting. Uncomplicated watercolor paintings in muted tones evoke vintage children’s picture books and help to make this a safe yet exciting tale for emerging readers. Refrains and a simple vocabulary make this an appropriate choice for phonics development and may inspire young creators to write their own works.
An impressive, readable debut by a juvenile creator. (ages 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953904-46-1
Page Count: 18
Publisher: DP Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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