Exhausting
Even Vikings need to sleep.
Not that rumbustious sibs Hack and Whack seem to believe that. When their mother calls them to bed, the children, appropriately hacking and whacking at each other with wooden ax and sword, resist energetically. “NOOOOOOOOOOO! We are HACK and WHACK on the attack!” is their refrain. The pint-sized warriors proceed to lay waste to their village, wreaking chaos on page after page as hapless Viking adults in horned helmets and breastplates look on. Both dialogue (in horned speech balloons) and sound effects emphasize the sound “ack”: “THWACK THWACK / CLICKETY… / CLACK” accompany visuals in which Hack and Whack tip over an occupied (and, judging by the sign on its door, wheelchair-accessible) outhouse. The kids roust all their friends for a climactic melee, after which their mom “sneaks” up on them, “smacks” them each on the head (the blow is not illustrated, but the children are depicted in cartoon-reeling mode, with stars and weaponry circling above their dazed heads), and bathes them before tucking them into their little longship-shaped beds. The story is slapstick violence start to finish, Cotterill’s busy spreads filled with Hack and Whack’s gleeful mayhem. All the Vikings are white, and their uniformly unkempt hair bristles in red, blond, and brown. Hack sports pigtails and a leather dress, while Whack wears short hair and a jerkin; evidently Viking violence is not gender-specific.
Exhausting . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-571-32871-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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