by Willy Claflin & illustrated by James Stimson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2011
Continuing efforts to find a two-legged audience for the woodland tales of Maynard Moose, veteran yarnspinner Claflin follows up The Uglified Ducky (2008) with another “distremely” hilarious mashup. Related in moose dialect, the tale has young Punzel cutting off her “goldie” locks after they become “all full of sticks and twigs and little nastified wudgies of glop” and then tangle hopelessly in the bushes during her flight from a witchy hair stylist. With help from “eight or nine seven dwarfs” with names like Clumsy, Hyper, Grizelda and Ambidexterous, she escapes for a while but eventually falls victim to the witch’s poisoned watermelon. Her glass coffin becomes a tourist-magnet centerpiece for a dwarf-run amusement park until the clumsy Handsome Prince comes riding along on a snow-white moose to fall onto the coffin and wake her. Using dark backdrops that brighten the colors of the blocky figures in the foreground, Stimson places the escapade in a traditional medieval setting. He endows the fugitive damsel with oversized spectacles and slips in droll details like Japanese tourists visiting a “Punzeldog” stand at the roadside attraction. In the end, Punzel falls for the moose, the Prince marries the witch and all “lived happily for never afterwords.” Moral? “[T]here ain’t no moral,” the antlered narrator concludes. Plenty of belly laughs, though. Packaged with a recorded version delivered in a Bullwinkle-ish lisp. (glossary) (Fractured fairy tale. 8-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-87483-914-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More In The Series
by Willy Claflin & illustrated by James Stimson
by Willy Claflin & illustrated by James Stimson
More by Willy Claflin
BOOK REVIEW
by Willy Claflin & illustrated by James Stimson
BOOK REVIEW
by Willy Claflin & illustrated by James Stimson
by Luisana Duarte Armendáriz ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2020
Come for the mystery, stay for the backmatter.
This gentle, fast-paced mystery will hook readers with interesting details.
Julieta Leal, 9, is a magnet for disasters. She has a reputation at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where both her parents work, for making trouble. Julieta is just trying to help, and it’s not her fault that sometimes things get broken or she has a hard time following the rules. When Julieta’s dad invites her along on a trip to Paris regarding the loan of some pieces from the Louvre, she jumps at the chance to add another purple pin to her family’s world-travel map. She promises to be helpful and stay out of trouble and desperately wants to shed her reputation of being a liability. This proves difficult when the dazzling Regent Diamond is stolen and Julieta and her dad are implicated in the theft. With her dad’s job in peril and the prized gem missing, Julieta must rely on her keen observations and tenacity to clear their names. Detailed descriptions of Paris landmarks and factual information about museum pieces are woven naturally into the fast-moving plot so that readers come away with knowledge of these topics alongside a satisfying story. Several pages of backmatter notes bolster the learning. The endearing Julieta is bilingual, and she and her family are Mexican American.
Come for the mystery, stay for the backmatter. (glossaries) (Mystery. 8-11)Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64379-046-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tu Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
by Uma Krishnaswami ; illustrated by Julianna Swaney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2016
Yasmin’s campaign should help inspire young readers to believe in their own potential to make a difference and teach the...
When her source of books is threatened, so is 9-year-old Yasmin’s goal of reading a book a day “forever.”
The inspiration behind and assistant to her in that goal is Book Uncle, owner of a free lending library on the street corner where she lives. His motto is to provide the “right book for the right person for the right day.” When Book Uncle is forced to shut down his lending library because he can’t afford the permit, Yasmin is disappointed and confused. She is then motivated to try and get the lending library back in business and enlists the help of her friends and then their larger neighborhood. All this happens amid a mayoral election, which provides the perfect background for the plot. Yasmin is a precocious, inquisitive protagonist with a tendency to speak before she thinks. Her relationships with her family and friends read as authentic and loving, even, and perhaps especially, in the moments when they are not perfect. This all lays the foundation for the community organizing that later becomes so necessary in effecting the change that Yasmin seeks to make. Swaney’s playful, childlike illustrations advance the action and help to bring Yasmin’s Indian city to life.
Yasmin’s campaign should help inspire young readers to believe in their own potential to make a difference and teach the valuable lesson that sometimes it takes several small actions to make big moves. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55498-808-2
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
More by Uma Krishnaswami
BOOK REVIEW
by Uma Krishnaswami ; illustrated by Christopher Corr
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.