A fetching story, perfect for budding artists and lovers of the funnies.
How young Sparky and Spike became the famous cartoonist Charles Schulz and his beloved creation Snoopy.
Sparky’s dog, Spike, white with black spots, is the “wildest and smartest dog ever.” He drinks from the bathroom faucet, fetches potatoes on command, and eats seemingly anything (razor blades!) without getting sick. He can tell time, letting Sparky’s father know on Saturday evening when it’s time to head to the drugstore for the Sunday funny pages. Sparky loves to draw cartoons. When his teacher predicts he will be an artist someday, Sparky is determined “not…to be just any artist—he is going to be a cartoonist.” When Sparky sends a letter about Spike to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and it’s published in the Sunday comics along with his drawing of Spike, Sparky is inspired. And, indeed, as explained in the author’s note (which includes family photos of Sparky and Spike), Charles grew up to create “Peanuts.” In the illustrator’s note, Andreasen reveals that when he was a young boy he sent a drawing to Charles Schulz and got a personal reply (included in the backmatter) that inspired him, like Sparky, to become an illustrator. Andreasen does not try to emulate Schulz’s iconic style, instead rendering delicately hashed, fairly realistic cartoons, placing his mostly white cast on funny-pages–bright backdrops.
A fetching story, perfect for budding artists and lovers of the funnies. (Picture book/biography. 4-8)Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944903-58-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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