The tone is light, the pictures are bright—but there’s a hint of Stephen King in this tale of a big sister who loves playing doctor to small injured creatures so much that she won’t let them go when they’re healed. Fond of “helping her fellow animals if she could, especially the cute ones,” Gumbrella the elephant dispatches her little brother into the woods to bring back, “squirrels with sniffles, mice with measles, moles with mumps,” and anyone else too ill to flee. Soon the house is full of tiny patients, all placed in big hospital beds and heaped with relentless TLC. Months later, weary of having their pleas to be released ignored, the animals at last stage a mass exodus during a spectacular elephantine dance recital. (“The applause sounded different this time, more like wings flapping and feet scurrying.”) Nevertheless, they return to smother their disconsolate former captor with the same sort of attention she had given them. Moreover, it looks as though she revels in it. Deadpan expressions and low-key reactions enhance the ambiguity of this veteran illustrator’s faintly offbeat solo debut. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-399-23347-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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