Udderly engaging, if an innings short of a finished match.
Melodramatic Aussie narration and broadly comical art milk this tale of cricket’s origins Down Under for all it’s worth.
It all begins when a Jersey cow named Jenny Bramble Rose, getting a cricket up her nose, sneezes out a ball of cud that one pasture mate whacks with a willow stick and another catches in her hat after a heroic gallop (“HOWZAT?”). This proves so exciting that the other cattle all want to play. They get together to set rules, take team pictures, appoint a goat as referee and play for five days to a (voluntary) draw before a riveted crowd of farm animals. Most of the hilariously dodgy-looking creatures in Redlich’s rustic cartoons squawk, moo, hop, bleat, grimace, cheer, lay an egg or poop when tapped. Viewers can drag the bat and ball, move scenes along at will (using either arrows or the thumbnail index or just by tapping screens) and have any words in the rhymed text re-pronounced with a touch. There is an autoplay option but no silent mode. Along with that sticky wicket, children won’t come away with more than a vague notion of how cricket is actually played. Still, the closing stanza’s “From that day on the game became a ritual sort of test, / Of having fun but playing fair and giving it your best” is applicable to any sport.
Udderly engaging, if an innings short of a finished match. (iPad storybook app. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Colour Me Interactive
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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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