A sensitive tale takes a wry look at the sometimes prickly and often painful path of children’s social relationships. Minnie is devastated when she hears her best friend Charles mention a party at his house on Saturday and then doesn’t receive an invitation. In true Murphy’s Law tradition, Minnie is surrounded by reminders of celebrations: her spelling words for the week are about parties, her pajamas have a confetti theme printed on them, and party stores accidentally call her home. As the week preceding the party drags on, Minnie becomes increasingly despondent. However, Minnie’s tale does have a happy ending. On the big day, Minnie discovers Charles at the local ball field and happily learns that the party was for his sister, not him. Bluthenthal (Meaner Than Meanest, 2001, etc.) neatly balances Minnie’s growing despair with a compassionate yet comical flare, using cartoon-style watercolor illustrations as a humorous foil for the text. Minnie conjures up a myriad of reasons why Charles’s invite did not reach her; thinking perhaps the invitation went to the wrong home or maybe even something more dire. Featured next to these statements are Minnie’s vivid imaginings: a nose-pierced Mohawk-styled adolescent looks bewilderedly at a party invite in one thought cloud and a whirling tornado carries off an entire mailbox in another. While it skirts the heavy issue of how to cope when a child is truly left out of an important gathering of peers, Bluthenthal’s understanding tale offers readers the solace of knowing that everyone at one time or another struggles with feeling left out. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-84141-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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