Do not be deceived by the diminutive trim size and aloofly posed but pettable-looking feline on the cover: there’s nothing warm or fuzzy about this eerie tale of a family enslaved by an adopted stray. The kitten that slips into the yard one day seems to hypnotize everyone in the Burrell family except baby Luke, the dog Billy—and narrator David, 12, who watches with increasing alarm as his parents and little sister lose track of their jobs, friends, and lives to feed and care for it. Feeding ravenously, it doubles in size each week, becoming in the process less catlike, and more—something else. As the creature stays out of sight, David is unable to convince anyone that something’s amiss—cats are often pampered, right? At last, with the aid of a friend, he concocts a desperate, chancy plan to drive it away. With tiny, somber vignettes enhancing the spooky atmosphere, this episode makes decidedly unsafe bedtime reading—but, like Robert Westall’s Stones of Muncaster Cathedral (1993), it offers in a small package both big, delicious chills, and, for sharper readers, a cautionary metaphor to chew over. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-73186-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center.
Armed only with her magical sewing needle, foundling mouse Delphine sets out to confront the cruel rat king in this duology closer.
As vicious rat armies pillage the mouse realms in search of her and her pointy, long-hidden treasure, Delphine finds herself waging an inner war that parallels the outer one. According to dusty documents and other reputable sources, the needle’s good powers can be perverted, but she sees no other way except killing to stop evil rat King Midnight. While struggling with a grim determination to go over to the dark side that sets her at odds with her own fundamentally loving nature, Delphine threads her way along with loyal allies past various scrapes—only to come, climactically, face to face with not only her nemesis, but her own past. Moon stitches in flashbacks to fill out the details of a tragic old love triangle that reaches its fruition here and sews her tale up with a return to Château Desjardins just in time for Cinderella’s wedding and a celebratory rodentine ball in the chandelier overhead, and she leaves a fringe of epilogue hinting at further installments to come.
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center. (secret codes) (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-04833-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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