On a night “hot enough to wake the dead,” Brando and his family seek relief on the sleeping porch. Sure enough, leaping through the screen from the cemetery below comes a ghost cat: “Hot dog, it’s a hot night,” it yawns, before taking Brando on a fanciful tour of the night sky, past the melting city, through Saturn’s rings and a pod of flying right whales to an iceberg on “a sea of shimmering ice.” Wallace modulates his tale from reality to fantasy and back again nicely, the events of Brando’s nighttime adventure unfurling with the nonsensical logic of a dream. Sensuous language puts readers directly into the moment: The bits of ice Brando and Graveyard Cat enjoy taste “like winter on their tongues.” The dialogue between the two tends toward stiffness, however, as do some of the cool, watercolor compositions; the gorgeous, silvery blue-and-green fantasy panoramas of whales and icebergs succeed brilliantly where some of the close-ups do not. In all, a quietly whimsical way to beat the heat. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-88899-826-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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