“My cat can’t read, can’t read a word. / (To think he could would be absurd.) / Yet every time I read a book, / he scrambles up to take a look.” Winning high marks for child appeal, this collection pairs two dozen rollicking rhymed tributes to the behavior and vagaries of cats with simple, vivacious cartoon portraits of chubby, skinny, ragged, neatly groomed, lazy, wild, wide-eyed, heavy-lidded, young, old and ageless felines, mostly in domestic settings. Some, like “Finicky Felicia” or “Mixed-Up Max,” are named, while others are anonymous—but all offer entertainment to their humans, companionship and comfort in times of stress: “She rubs her head against my leg, / and I’m no longer sad— / for suddenly my awful day / is really not so bad.” Crawley may not dig so deeply into the feline psyche, and his own, as Cynthia Rylant does in Boris (see below), but rare is the young reader who won’t respond to the deep affection he conveys, affirmed by the closing observation that stroking 20-year-old Tandy “still brings back the joy— / when she was a kitten and I was a boy.” (Poetry. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-59078-287-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
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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