Manny Wolf is looking for a job. When he spies an ad in the paper that reads, “Wolf Wanted,” it seems perfect. But alas, they are looking for a real wolf, not a human with a convenient last name. However, the company has so many applicants that they need someone to go through all of the letters. Manny is hired. As each letter unfolds, Manny begins to recognize familiar canine friends. Readers will delight in guessing which wolf, from several popular stories and fables, has applied for the job. The first few are simple; one unknown wolf boasts about huffing and puffing. But several letters in, the wolves get more obscure. One even has a reference from St. Francis of Assisi! Cardon’s wolves are sly, with sharp teeth and long pointy snouts. Even Manny resembles his namesake, with angular features and two tufts of hair sticking straight up. Translated by Amado from Portuguese, the text is a bit heavy at times, but the letters themselves are clever fun. With a wink and a nod to fictional wolves worldwide. (facts on wolves) (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-88899-880-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
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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