Earnest animal fantasy with exceptionally designed illustrations but uncomfortably set in a time and place undeserving of a...
A timid mouse goes on an inadvertent journey.
Cornered by a house cat, Celeste (A Nest for Celeste, 2010) spends the night nestled in a wagon laden with cotton. In the morning, the wagon departs with Celeste aboard, and her home disappears behind her. Her voyage is episodic, featuring new friends, myriad hiding places (a sewing box; a barrel of cornmeal), and dangers (a steamboat that sinks, fur trappers, a season that gets cold). The shy little rodent travels up the Mississippi River from “a long way south,” landing someplace with “brilliant fall colors and icicles and snowdrifts.” Other animals protect her, and then she’s adopted by a white boy named Abe (Lincoln, the author’s note confirms), who’s portrayed almost romantically as particularly kind, thoughtful, and hungry for education. Descriptions of nature are lush; Cole’s black-and-white pencil drawings touch almost every spread, soft and gentle, evocative, sometimes covering entire pages. Unfortunately, the piece ignores an underlying ugliness: in the early 1800s in Mississippi, Celeste’s cozy, “safe” original home—a plantation—almost certainly would have been a site of slavery, and the story’s only obviously black human—a friendly cook on the steamboat—might have been enslaved.
Earnest animal fantasy with exceptionally designed illustrations but uncomfortably set in a time and place undeserving of a rosy glow. (author’s note) (Animal fantasy. 6-10)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265812-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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