Feeling the need to stretch her wings, young Jane leaves her feline Overlook Farm family to fly back to the city where she was born. There she discovers the truth of her sister Thelma’s warning that “being different is difficult and sometimes very dangerous,” when a man named Poppa treats her like royalty, but traps her by closing the window. As in the three previous Catwings books (Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994, etc.), Le Guin’s winged creatures are more cat than bird in behavior and outlook: Jane’s sinuous grace comes through clearly in Schindler’s small, precise paintings. Patiently awaiting her chance, Jane at last slips out an open door, to settle down comfortably with her doting mother, in the apartment of gray-haired Sarah, a different sort of human who, instead of closing the window, opens it wider. Wanderlust, leaving home, the meaning of freedom—these are big themes for such a small book, but the author handles them with the ease of long practice, and the illustrations are just the right mix of the exotic and the familiar. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30133-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
SEEN & HEARD
Big Brown Bear, with a natty bowler hat, is all set to paint the house in this cheerful Level 1 reader. Every page presents a full-color scene and a few words of easily predicted, often rhyming text: “Bear is big. Bear is brown. Bear goes up. He comes down.” Big Bear climbs a ladder with a pail of blue paint, while nearby, Little Bear plays with a ball and bat—“Oh no! Little Bear! Do not do that!” These are simple words, but sometimes challenging ones, e.g., there are two uses of up, as in climbing the ladder and washing up. The pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations provide nearly ideal context, while also amplifying the story. The format is attractive and practical, featuring large type on a white background that is placed for easy reading. Beginning readers will be amused by the gentle humor in the book, and feel accomplished to have tackled it themselves. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201999-5
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Green Light/Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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BOOK REVIEW
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