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POTCH & POLLY

Name: POTCH & POLLY
Author: William Steig
ISBN: 0-374-36090-1

by William Steig & illustrated by Jon Agee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2002

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Agee (Milo’s Hat Trick, 2001, etc.) illustrates this comic take on the course of true love never running smooth with clownish flair. Short, jolly Potch meets beanpole Polly Pumpernickel at a costume ball and falls head over heels. So does Polly, when he accidentally tosses her into a fountain. Potch’s hilariously clumsy efforts to patch things up only annoy Polly more until she hears his guardian angel (who comes complete with an orange wig and bulb nose) advising him to give it up, as “ ‘Polly Pumpernickel will never understand your kind of love.’ ” Shortly thereafter, Potch receives a large gift box, out of which spins Polly. “Somewhere music started playing,” and the two are last seen dancing off to a presumably blissful future. Steig’s (Which Would You Rather Be?, p. 668, etc.) extravagant prose—“Polly thought Potch might be the daffy darling of her daily dreams. The one missing piece of her pie”—gives the essentially adult tale the air of a sophisticated valentine, but perceptive younger readers will also catch the tenderness underlying this rocky, slapstick romance. (Picture book. 7-9)

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2002

ISBN: 0-374-36090-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
TOBY, WHO ARE YOU?
by William Steig & illustrated by Teryl Euvremer

- BOOK REVIEW
WHEN EVERYBODY WORE A HAT
by William Steig & illustrated by William Steig

- BOOK REVIEW
WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER BE?
by William Steig & illustrated by Barry Bliss

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COUSIN MARKIE AND OTHER DISASTERS

by Christel Kleitsch & illustrated by Paul Meisel ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1992

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A humorous story about a boy realizing for the first time what it's like to be in the other guy's shoes: Ben tries hard to be nice when his nerdy cousin Markie visits for a weekend, but when Markie makes him miss out on the leaf-raking job that would finally have given him enough money to buy a skateboard, Ben takes out his frustration and disappointment on the younger boy. Unexpectedly, Markie lashes back, forcing Ben to think hard about his own behavior. That—and Markie's surprising chutzpah at an amusement park—cause Ben to notice unsuspected qualities in his weird cousin, and leads to the beginnings of a friendship between them. Though the reading here is easy, Kleitsch neatly renders the foibles of both kids and adults. Some of the cartoon-like b&w drawings show Ben's fantasy adventures, Ö la Calvin and Hobbes. (Fiction. 7-9)

Pub Date: June 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-525-44891-8

Page Count: 74

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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RINALDO, THE SLY FOX

by Ursel Scheffler & translated by J. Alison James & illustrated by Iskender Gider ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1992

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In the crime spree that is this easy chapter book's focus, the eponymous villain is part rogue, part gentleman-bandit, part duty- shirking Tom Sawyer. Rinaldo doesn't miss a trick: nestling into hotel life long enough to steal a valuable necklace from a feckless hen before ducking the bill; getting the owner of a glitzy car to participate in its theft; tricking an army of animals into planting a crop of corn for him. But for dissecting the criminal mind, none is better than Bruno, the Duck Detective; and when the two old enemies finally face, readers will be in a fine fettle trying to determine just who won. In the never-ending struggle between good and evil, perhaps it doesn't matter. Those just mastering reading will light into this funny adventure, which pays homage to the clichÇs of the suspense genre as easily as it parodies them. Fortunately for moralists, Gider's vivid watercolors take the sting out of Rinaldo's mischief; in these scenes, he seems a benign smirker who, though doing no one any good, is not really doing them any harm, either. (Fiction. 7-9)