An adventurous boy disregards his grandfather’s orders to remain behind the closed garden gate when a fierce wolf is spotted in the neighborhood. When the dangerous wolf threatens Peter’s wildlife friends in the meadow, he succeeds in tricking and capturing it with the help of a small bird. The happy ending shows the hunters, Peter and Grandfather, proudly leading the wolf to the zoo. The story is best known as the narrative to Prokofiev’s symphony written for children, which introduces orchestral instruments through musical themes that represented each character. To those already familiar with the music, it may reverberate in their heads as they read the text. For those unfamiliar with the music, an afterword includes the musical notation and instrumentation of the themes and a very brief biography of Prokofiev. Peter’s story stands alone, illustrated with Vagin’s (The Enormous Carrot, 1998, etc.) pencil and watercolor drawings. Clothing, tableware, architecture, and Peter’s toys represent the pre-Revolutionary Russia of Prokofiev’s music and portray an authentic Russian folk quality. Each action-filled page depicts the personalities of the characters and their realistic actions: the cat hunches close to the ground as she stalks the bird; the wolf licks his lips in anticipation of a tasty meal; the duck’s feathers fly as he tries to run before the wolf swallows him whole. The exciting illustrations give another context to a modern folktale than can co-exist with the symphony that first made it famous. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-590-38608-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children...
A fizzy yet revealing romp through the toy world.
Though of standard picture-book size, Stein and illustrator Staake’s latest collaboration (Bugs Galore, 2012, etc.) presents a sweeping compendium of diversions for the young. From fairies and gnomes, race cars and jacks, tin cans and socks, to pots ’n’ pans and a cardboard box, Stein combs the toy kingdom for equally thrilling sources of fun. These light, tightly rhymed quatrains focus nicely on the functions characterizing various objects, such as “Floaty, bubbly, / while-you-wash toys” or “Sharing-secrets- / with-tin-cans toys,” rather than flatly stating their names. Such ambiguity at once offers Staake free artistic rein to depict copious items capable of performing those tasks and provides pre-readers ample freedom to draw from the experiences of their own toy chests as they scan Staake’s vibrant spreads brimming with chunky, digitally rendered objects and children at play. The sense of community and sharing suggested by most of the spreads contributes well to Stein’s ultimate theme, which he frames by asking: “But which toy is / the best toy ever? / The one most fun? / Most cool and clever?” Faced with three concluding pages filled with all sorts of indoor and outside toys to choose from, youngsters may be shocked to learn, on turning to the final spread, that the greatest one of all—“a toy SENSATION!”—proves to be “[y]our very own / imagination.”
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children everywhere. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6254-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Great gobs of glue should be more fun than this. (Picture book. 4-7)
Can there be too much glue? Matty’s about to find out.
Matty’s art teacher warns him that too much glue will never dry, but Matty (and his dad) loves glue; they play with it constantly. So Matty finds the “fullest” bottle in the art room and squirts it all over his project. Then he flops down in the middle of the mess…and gets stuck. He’s “a blucky stucky mess!” His friends try to lasso him with yarn and haul him out, but the yarn breaks and gets stuck; now, he’s “a clingy stringy, blucky stucky mess.” A Lego tow truck snaps apart in another rescue attempt, making him a “click-brick, clingy stringy, blucky stucky mess!” When the bell rings, the glue’s dry, and dad must peel gluey Matty off the table. At home, he’s divested of his glue suit, and Dad puts a magnet on it and sticks it to the fridge. After dinner, the family explores the fun of duct tape. Despite the busy plot and superabundance of exclamation marks, Lefebvre’s debut never rises to the level of mayhem or fun it aspires to. The cumulative portion of the tale loses rhyme, rhythm and logic six pages before it ends. Retz’s Photoshop paintings are bright, wide-eyed and goofy, but they can’t add enough fun to compensate for the lackluster text.
Great gobs of glue should be more fun than this. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-9362612-7-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flashlight Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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