Offbeat tales for readers in the mood for something whimsically contemplative.
An Italian traveling salesman has promised his daughter regular bedtime stories, so he calls her nightly from a pay phone. To save money, he must keep his stories short.
Whimsical in tone, many of these 67 short stories involve language play, such as tales about inventing numbers (“a tricyclon of squintillions”) and a boy who asks impossible questions (“Why do whiskers have cats?”). Some stories are philosophical in nature, questioning war (in one story, a “festive concert of bells” rings from a cannon) and power (a child who is literally transparent alters everyone’s views of a tyrant). A string of closing stories centers on other planets, including one about a chick from Eighth Mars who tells everyone that “the word ‘enemy’ is nonexistent outside of Earth.” Each story is accompanied by an illustration, many inventive and done in highly saturated colors; most humans are depicted with magenta skin. Many stories include gatefold illustrations; others are illustrations on inset small pages, attached to the recto of a spread. Virtually all playfully ask readers to stop and think. Originally written 40 years ago by an Italian author, the stories hold up, though during a time in the United States in which monkey imagery is being reconsidered in children’s books, readers may bristle at a story about dimwitted anthropomorphic monkeys walking in circles in a cage at the zoo.
Offbeat tales for readers in the mood for something whimsically contemplative. (Picture book/short stories. 7-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59270-284-8
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Thought-provoking and charming.
A sophisticated robot—with the capacity to use senses of sight, hearing, and smell—is washed to shore on an island, the only robot survivor of a cargo of 500.
When otters play with her protective packaging, the robot is accidently activated. Roz, though without emotions, is intelligent and versatile. She can observe and learn in service of both her survival and her principle function: to help. Brown links these basic functions to the kind of evolution Roz undergoes as she figures out how to stay dry and intact in her wild environment—not easy, with pine cones and poop dropping from above, stormy weather, and a family of cranky bears. She learns to understand and eventually speak the language of the wild creatures (each species with its different “accent”). An accident leaves her the sole protector of a baby goose, and Roz must ask other creatures for help to shelter and feed the gosling. Roz’s growing connection with her environment is sweetly funny, reminiscent of Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family. At every moment Roz’s actions seem plausible and logical yet surprisingly full of something like feeling. Robot hunters with guns figure into the climax of the story as the outside world intrudes. While the end to Roz’s benign and wild life is startling and violent, Brown leaves Roz and her companions—and readers—with hope.
Thought-provoking and charming. (Science fiction/fantasy. 7-11)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38199-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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