Pretty, but target-audience readers expecting much in the way of plot or character development get the shaft.
Prosaic writing and herky-jerky visual transitions mar the “story” part of this movie storybook, but the tale’s only a platform for a generous array of puzzles and other distractions anyway.
Backed by plaintive Hibernian music, a thickly accented narrator sketchily recaps the struggle between warlike young princess Merida and her prim royal mother, from the archery contest with prospective suitors and the spell that temporarily turns the queen into a bear (just in time for a climactic battle with a similarly cursed ursine) to the closing reconciliation. The text is nothing but pedestrian: “The next morning, Merida showed her mother how to catch fish in a stream. For the first time in a while, they had fun together.” The text panels slide in and out of view as scenes created in the film’s lushly detailed, 3-D style pan, zoom or shift angles. Only rarely do these changes occur smoothly enough to emulate video convincingly, however, and taps rarely activate more action than a small gesture or low-volume background sounds. The app offers options for self-recording and a frustratingly ponderous autoplay—along with, more temptingly, a multilevel shooting game, six coloring pages and six jigsaw puzzles accessible through scattered links or a “Play” icon on the title screen.
Pretty, but target-audience readers expecting much in the way of plot or character development get the shaft. (iPad movie storybook app. 6-8)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Disney Publishing Worldwide Applications
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
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