An ill-mannered shrew learns a valuable lesson. The story is told in five “acts,” bracketed (and interrupted) by a tart grandmother shrew, who tells the tale to her hungry grandson. Under a big spruce tree on the West Meadow lives a huge burrow-ful of shrews, the most temperamental of whom is surely little Lola. “Shrews are not known for being nice, but Lola really took the cake.” Lola meets her match in visiting cousin Lester; they scream at each other until both lose their voices. At school, they fight about activities and at home about beds and food. The exhausted Lola has an epiphany: When she and Lester fight, both lose. A compromise leads to harmony, in sleeping arrangements and at the dinner table. Smath’s busy, impish illustrations—in watercolor accented with pen-and-ink—are a good match for Weiss’s substantial narrative, told mostly in dialogue. There are chuckles on every page—particularly in the grandmother’s narrative asides, which hint at her identity (“Screaming is relaxing”)—and readers won’t need to know Shakespeare to enjoy this yarn. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8109-4066-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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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