Riding the wave of presidential-pooch enthusiasm comes the season’s second picture book on the subject. An appealingly scruffy, homeless black mutt scans the newspaper, seeing articles on housing woes and global opportunities, and resolves to try his luck elsewhere. So off he treks by motorcycle, boat and ox-cart to such varied locales as Newfoundland, France, Croatia, Australia, South Africa and Peru, eventually circumnavigating the globe and fetching right back up in the East Coast city he started from. There he reads another newspaper headline—“First Family Looks for Dog”—and trots on over to the White House: “Daddy, Daddy, can we keep him?” ask two little-girl pairs of feet. The inevitable presidential answer: “YES, WE CAN!” Dog’s quest is a little muzzy on the logic: He’s off to find the “perfect place to live,” but at each stop he compares himself to a local breed of dog and decides it’s not for him, only occasionally making reference to housing. Not quite as ephemeral as the Feiffers’ Which Puppy?, though—at least readers will get some geography. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58536-467-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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
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
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