The fates look kindly upon the mixture of longing, serendipity, and quick thinking that accompanies the Parks’ story of Yum Yung’s bagel desire. It came to Yum Yung out of the blue one day: His village in Korea might have many things—“There were waterfalls rushing into streams of darting fish. There were lilacs gently blossoming on every hillside”—but there were no New York bagels. To remedy this problem, Yum Yung ties a note to a pigeon’s leg and bids the bird haste to New York City with his request for a bagel. But the bird is ever-so-long in returning, and Yum Yung worries the bird has delivered it somewhere else. So he asks his neighbors—a farmer, a fisherman, a beekeeper—if they have seen it. No, they respond after learning what a bagel is. “It is round and it has a hole in the middle.” They are experts in their craft, but it is not a plow wheel, a life ring, or a circle of bees. When Yum Yung is paying a visit to the baker, the pigeon returns, not with a bagel, but with a note from Joe’s To-Go Bagels giving his secret recipe. The baker says she hasn’t the ingredients, but Yum Yung knows just where to get flour, sea salt, and honey. And voilà, Yum Yung has his bagel. Lin’s transporting artwork has a toned-down Eastern flavor that makes for a successful expression of the story’s trans-cultural happening, but it is the pursuit of passion—and the warm rewards that may follow on its wake—that makes this story special. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2001
ISBN: 1-58430-033-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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