Definitely not your mother’s etiquette book. Two friends, rendered almost always simply as heads, explore the niceties of table manners: Chester, a swoop of blue and green with red smiling mouth and four or five upswept hairs, and Dudunya, a round, bald fellow with big ears and genial smile. Each is rendered in the inimitable style of his creator/alter-ego, Raschka (Little Tree, p. 1210, etc.) and Radunsky (My Dolly, p. 497, etc.), respectively. The friends bop across bright collage backgrounds, presenting the basic rules of polite eating. “But Chester, why a fork and a knife?” asks the clueless Dudunya. Chester patiently explains, “Because it makes you look grown-up, and because a knife makes big things small enough to fit in your mouth.” Accompanying this sage advice is a picture of Dudunya armed with knife and fork and about to carve into a baked potato sectioned like a butcher’s chart. Unfortunately, the design is overdone, with multimedia illustrations and typefaces of varying degrees of urgency vying for the reader’s attention, with frequently dizzying results. Also, this collaboration between two of children’s books’ more exciting artists smacks not a little of self-indulgence, with much of the wit seemingly aimed over the heads of its putative audience: how many American children, for instance, will relate to the concept of elevenses? Still, there is definite kid appeal in the broad humor that allows Chester to illustrate the consequences of neglecting to chew and to deliver the tautological instruction that “napkins are definitely not . . . everything that is not a napkin.” Maybe, just maybe, after reading this, kids will go to a restaurant and remember to sit in their seats “with a nice smile.” (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-1453-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your dreads! Isadora once again plies her hand using colorful, textured collages to depict her fourth fairy tale relocated to Africa. The narrative follows the basic story line: Taken by an evil sorceress at birth, Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower; Rapunzel and the prince “get married” in the tower and she gets pregnant. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and tricks the prince, who throws himself from the tower and is blinded by thorns. The terse ending states: “The prince led Rapunzel and their twins to his kingdom, where they were received with great joy and lived happily every after.” Facial features, clothing, dreadlocks, vultures and the prince riding a zebra convey a generic African setting, but at times, the mixture of patterns and textures obfuscates the scenes. The textile and grain characteristic of the hewn art lacks the elegant romance of Zelinksy’s Caldecott version. Not a first purchase, but useful in comparing renditions to incorporate a multicultural aspect. (Picture book/fairy tale. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-24772-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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