Masterful artwork and nuanced verse invite readers to hold their breath and dive deep. (Picture book. 6-10)
Sophia knows all the sea’s secrets (its “dragons,” “floating forests,” “clowns,” “angels,” and “four-eyed butterflies”), and she invites readers to follow her deep underwater to discover what lies full fathom five.
Kaleidoscopic illustrations teem with cerulean colors, shifting shapes, and swirling patterns, evoking oceanic fantasies filled with mysterious sea creatures, treasure, magic, and transformations. Sophia’s ebony hair drifts with the current, her porcelain skin glows, and her calm voice coaxes readers down, down, down, where “tentacles, / antennae and teeth disappear into / darknesss…and an abyss becomes / a bottomless pit of possibilities….” Readers feel woozily enchanted by this little snow-white siren and the myriad underwater miracles as they descend. Shafts of white space, often highlighting the narrative verse, administer welcome breaths of air amid a density of fish and flotsam. Luxbacher’s graphite, watercolor, and acrylic illustrations (composed digitally, printed using archival inks and papers, then enhanced with soft-colored pencil and found collage materials) offer opportunity for interpretation and pleasurable scrutiny. Why and how is a little bird trailing Sophia all the way to the ocean’s floor? Who is Sophia’s reassuring mermaid twin? Readers ride waves of wonder all the way back to dry land, where they find Sophia snuggled in bed with her mother.
Masterful artwork and nuanced verse invite readers to hold their breath and dive deep. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77306-014-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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
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