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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

Name: LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Author: Ellie Jenkins
ISBN: 978-1-61067-610-6

From the A Masked Fairy Tale series

by Ellie Jenkins ; illustrated by Ellie Jenkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2017

With about the same amount of effort children can make their own masks from scratch—and act out less-superficial renditions...

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This reworked version of the classic tale keeps everyone uneaten and alive.

Designed for playacting, the edition comes with two punch-out partial masks on the oversized jacket flaps—one a wolf face with eyeholes, the other a red hood with a fringe of straight, light brown hair. Here the story follows its customary course, except that the wolf gives both Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma enough advance warning that both have time to jump out a window. The wolf then escapes into the woods when the two prospective victims enlist a “cheerful lumberjack” to join them in a loud collective “BOO!” In Jenkins’ equally bland illustrations, the wolf is plainly a child in a body costume, and seeing him asleep in Grandma’s bed, Little Red comments “Awww, the little wolfie looks SO CUTE!” All the characters, including the little child in the wolf costume, are white. Likewise, in the co-published Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the hairy homeowners are depicted as young white people in animal suits (though Papa Bear’s fur is darker brown than Mama Bear’s, Baby’s, and the single bear mask provided…read into that what you will), and Goldilocks becomes a “snoop” because there are “no toys, no TV shows, and NO VIDEO GAMES in the forest.”

With about the same amount of effort children can make their own masks from scratch—and act out less-superficial renditions of the stories too. (Novelty/folk tale. 6-8)

Pub Date: March 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-61067-610-6

Page Count: 20

Publisher: Kane Miller

Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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RALPH TELLS A STORY

by Abby Hanlon & illustrated by Abby Hanlon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2012

An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...

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With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.

Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.

An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012

ISBN: 978-0761461807

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing

Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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by Avery Monsen ; illustrated by Abby Hanlon

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DORY FANTASMAGORY, HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
by Abby Hanlon ; illustrated by Abby Hanlon

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by Abby Hanlon ; illustrated by Abby Hanlon

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IF I BUILT A SCHOOL

by Chris Van Dusen ; illustrated by Chris Van Dusen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019

An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.

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A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”

In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.

An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)