A lighthearted duel between Creativity and the Voice of Reason centers on a pair of lacy red panties blown off a clothesline. Deciding that it’s a hat, Rabbit lets an array of agreeable animal friends try it on, even as a repeated demurral (see title) runs in counterpoint along the bottom margin. The unseen nabob of negativity appears at last—a scruffy-looking donkey bearing an album of pictures (of, oddly, men in briefs) for proof. Downcast, Rabbit puts the panties on “properly,” but being as there’s no hole for a tail, and that all the other animals declare that it looks silly, the garment is soon back on Rabbit’s head. In the end, Rabbit even goes a step further, prying up the lower border of the penultimate picture so that the saturated colors of the cartoon-style woodland setting can symbolically flow down into the uncolored region of cold rationality. Pair this all-dialogue outing with Jan Brett’s The Hat (1997), in which a more developed story line carries similar play with unconventional headgear. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-933605-66-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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