“Perrier was no ordinary pig.” He’s a miniature potbellied pig with a pedigree, a Beverly Hills mansion, and his own uniformed nanny in this amusingly quirky tale. Perrier travels the world with his movie-star owner, Marbella, though he is never quite happy and is always yearning for something to make him feel satisfied. On an excursion to their country estate, Perrier joins some farm pigs for a romp in the mud that leaves him feeling ecstatic, though his newfound pleasure is quashed when Marbella extracts his promise to “stay clean.” He pines for the pleasures of mud, growing “pale and listless,” until Marbella shares her mud-based facial masks with him, followed by a visit to a luxurious hot springs for his birthday to sample the mud baths. Matje (City of Ink Drinkers, not reviewed, etc.) captures both Perrier’s wistful loneliness and his overblown lifestyle in stylish illustrations using sophisticated shades of pink, gray, and mud-brown mocha. While amusing to adults, much of the droll humor here will be over the heads of children unfamiliar with paparazzi, Perrier, and pedigrees. There’s something rather chilling about Perrier’s emptiness and longing, his hide-tingling physical ecstasy in a forbidden substance, his reluctant, repeated promises to “stay clean,” and his ultimate satisfaction in an expensive consumer product and an “exclusive celebrity hideaway.” Fizzy, but not very satisfying. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-0302-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
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
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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