A version of the classic tale rich in color and design but less than satisfying in the telling.
Beauty’s two older sisters are the villains, wanting only riches and titled husbands and wailing when their father loses his wealth and they must move to the countryside. When he returns to the city to mitigate his losses, the sisters ask for diamond tiaras and dresses, while Beauty asks for a rose, and the tale takes its traditional course. Beauty bravely attends the Beast, learns to appreciate what he offers her in books and amusements, but gently rejects him each night when he asks her to marry him. When she returns home to visit her father, she brings beautiful clothes that her sisters try to steal, but they turn into foolish-looking underwear when the sisters put them on. In revenge, her sisters conspire to keep her from the Beast, and she returns late only when she dreams he is dying, and the tale ends as readers will expect. Exquisite floral details, tiny patterns and cut-paper silhouettes make for much loveliness, but the touches of humor are forced, and the sisters are just silly. While one can nearly always use another gold-embossed fairy tale, this one fails to enchant. (Picture book/fairy tale. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-0600-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina...
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up.
Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields.
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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