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BILLY AND MILLY, SHORT AND SILLY

The short-story and picture-book forms are taken to a new level with these 13 very succinct vignettes told in double-page spreads using only three- or four-word rhymes formed with nouns and verbs. For example, the first story features a round-spectacled Billy holding a basketball and Milly next door, each sitting on their respective “stoops” waiting for the ice-cream truck. Billy plays “hoops” while Milly eats her “scoops” until Billy’s ball lands on Milly’s cone: “oops.” The four rhyming words are descriptive enough to emphasize action and reaction in a complete story, the main narrative thread of which depends on Mourning’s cartoon-style illustrations done in a mixed-media collage. Feldman’s choices of noun/verb combinations are not only clever but present a variety of amusing, imaginative and sensible scenarios. New readers will be able to visually move through the stories easily and will be encouraged to talk about the adventures and misadventures of these two friends after they read each rhyming set. A wonderfully playful introduction to language, rhyme and storytelling. (Picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: June 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-399-24651-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009

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SEE PIP POINT

From the Adventures of Otto series

In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip. The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface. Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)

Pub Date: March 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-689-85116-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003

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NOT A BOX

Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-112322-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006

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