Between the moose dialect and the story’s twist, this may not be one of your grandmother’s tales, but even she won’t be able...
Storytellers and Maynard Moose–lovers celebrate! There’s a wonderfully wacky new folksy tale for you.
Maynard (Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs, 2011, etc.) tells of Bully Goat Grim, a goat who is suffering from “Random Hostility Syndrome,” which causes him to lower his horns and head-butt cute, fluffy forest creatures. The kindly, though strange, troll family that lives under the bridge takes his challenge—“Beware, beware, the Bully Goat Grim! / Nobody better not mess with him!”—personally, but neither daddy troll nor mommy troll can decide on a way of dealing with the interloper. Luckily, baby troll knows her grammar and comes up with a clever plan that thwarts the goat’s meanness and uses his Random Hostility Syndrome as a source of entertainment. The moral? Learn your grammar and “demember— / nobody likes a dubnoxious beasty.” Claflin peppers his tale with such moose-isms as distremely and angrify, and his Northern Piney Woods amunals include busterflies. There is also some impressive vocabulary on display—trajectory, apogee, process, soporific, synergistic—and, of course, the whole concept of the double negative is at the heart of baby troll’s solution. Stimson’s illustrations are as droll as ever, his characters full of personality, and spreads that are packed with details will require repeat readings to uncover them all.
Between the moose dialect and the story’s twist, this may not be one of your grandmother’s tales, but even she won’t be able to resist a few chuckles. Hysterical. (audio CD) (Fractured fairy tale. 7-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-87483-952-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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