Playing with scale and prompting readers to think big ensures a quick and entertaining tour to awesome sights.
Minor focuses his attention on the symbolic gourd of fall, juxtaposing national landmarks or record-setting structures with visions of impossibly enormous pumpkins or jack-o’-lanterns.
The title poses a tantalizing question that leads gracefully from the real to the surreal. What follows in each full-bleed spread is a famous site—man-made or natural—painted with watercolor and gouache that majestically captures the impressiveness of the place. He includes in these illustrations an image of a wildly oversized pumpkin. It’s a quirky notion, and it kind of works. Few children would seek out a book on important places to see across the United States. A better bet is a title like this one, which imparts that information while also making them laugh at the sheer humor in the pictures. One image shows the highest roller coaster feeding into the open mouth of a fierce-looking jack-o’-lantern. Another pumpkin innocently stops traffic when it is placed in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Yet another smiles up close as a rocket takes off from Cape Canaveral. From Connecticut to California, 14 places are featured. More information about them is provided at the end of the book.
Playing with scale and prompting readers to think big ensures a quick and entertaining tour to awesome sights. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-24684-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
A sumptuously illustrated Jazz Age Cinderella story.
In author-illustrator Sheckels’ picture book, a maid at a grand hotel dreams of watching her favorite band perform.
In a world of genteel, anthropomorphized animals, Flora, a ferret, works as a scullery maid in a ritzy, three-story hotel. Scouring and scrubbing in her blue dress and apron, Flora hums along to the music in her heart, hoping that one day she’ll save enough pennies to attend a concert. When her favorite band, the Jazzers, is booked to play at the hotel, Flora desperately wants to watch them perform. The hotel manager, a snobbish fox, turns her away—but then the Jazzers themselves hear her humming outside their room. They’re in need of a vocalist, so they invite her to be their guest soloist, and then to join them permanently. Sheckels tells Flora’s story in straightforward, unrhymed prose, allowing the characters to take center stage without distraction; Flora is easily identifiable as a Cinderella archetype. The lush, hand-painted illustrations are whimsical in the tradition of Beatrix Potter, Inga Moore, and Jill Barklem, capture an Edwardian opulence as well as the grittier circumstances of those whose labors maintained such opulence. The Jazzers, consisting of waistcoated racoon (double bass), skunk (drums), rabbit (piano), and possum (saxophone), evoke a time when free-spirited bohemianism aimed to challenge class barriers.
A sumptuously illustrated Jazz Age Cinderella story.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393187
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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