There’s an audacious quality to Caldecott Honor–winning Provensen’s (A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, 1981) work, never more so than here, where she yokes together two Chinese stories, and uses Chinese painting as the inspiration for her oil on vellum images. There’s luminosity in both the glow of the art, and in the purity of the telling. In the first tale, Little Chu’s desperately poor village is beset by bandits, so he seeks to learn swordsmanship from the great Master Li. Master Li’s stewpot, water jug, and log all have lessons for Little Chu, and he learns them painfully. In the end, though, he masters the sword so well that he needs it only to chop cabbage, and brings prosperity to his village by wielding the famous sword to prepare meals. The Magic Doorway teaches likewise. The emperor is so taken with the magnificent painting Mu Chi is making on the palace wall that he wishes to have the artist put to death when he finishes, so no one else will have so great a work. But Mu Chi, who could make deer leap in his painted canyons and rabbits nibble the grass, paints a blue door, and then escapes through it: “I have some more paintings to make, and I cannot make them without a head,” he tells the emperor. The elegant precision of both prose and painting will speak to young readers, bringing home complicated lessons about freedom, choice, and preparedness. (Folktale. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83232-X
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Trickling, bubbling, swirling, rushing, a river flows down from its mountain beginnings, past peaceful country and bustling city on its way to the sea. Hooper (The Drop in My Drink, 1998, etc.) artfully evokes the water’s changing character as it transforms from “milky-cold / rattling-bold” to a wide, slow “sliding past mudflats / looping through marshes” to the end of its journey. Willey, best known for illustrating Geraldine McCaughrean’s spectacular folk-tale collections, contributes finely detailed scenes crafted in shimmering, intricate blues and greens, capturing mountain’s chill, the bucolic serenity of passing pastures, and a sense of mystery in the water’s shadowy depths. Though Hooper refers to “the cans and cartons / and bits of old wood” being swept along, there’s no direct conservation agenda here (for that, see Debby Atwell’s River, 1999), just appreciation for the river’s beauty and being. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0792-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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