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Cotton Candy Sally Finds a Home

A wholesome tale that will appeal to horse aficionados of the younger set.

Awards & Accolades

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A horse finds a new home in the first installment of debut author Belove’s Sally Horse Chronicles for children.

Cotton Candy Sally, a competitive “quarter horse,” lives an idyllic country life with her horse friends Dutch, Hunting Pony, Comet, and Solomon at Gone Away Farm in Iowa. But change comes when Sally’s owner, Lauren, is forced to close the barn following Lauren’s parents’ divorce. Sally and the other horses are loaded into trailers and driven from Iowa to a horse auction in New Jersey. There, Sally and Solomon are separated from their friends and sent to Bernadette’s Riding School in the heart of New York City. Bernadette is a kind, no-nonsense trainer, and she hopes that having a blue-ribbon winner like Sally in her riding school will raise its profile. But the trainer’s patience and expertise can’t conquer Sally’s fear of the city—in particular, her aversion to riding on busy streets alongside fast traffic. Terrified of cars, Sally starts throwing her riders and becomes unmanageable. Soon she’s relegated to her stall and rarely taken out, even into the training ring; Bernadette, despite her affection for Sally, can’t afford to keep a horse that no one can ride. But there’s one more person who believes in the horse: a troubled young rider named Kara who finds a special connection with the wary animal. Belove’s attention to detail when describing the world of horse training is superb, which is unsurprising given her background in the field; she once attended a riding school in New York City and continues to be involved in dressage and other aspects of riding. She seamlessly weaves training and equipment jargon into the prose, although it would have been helpful if some of the terms were defined more clearly for readers who are new to horses. The characterizations of the horses themselves are also well-done; Belove gives Sally a strong personality, for example, without making her seem too much like a human being. The plot is straightforward and predictable and the ending a little too neat, but it fits with the book’s uplifting theme and tone.

A wholesome tale that will appeal to horse aficionados of the younger set.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: April 4, 2016

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HOW TO CATCH THE EASTER BUNNY

From the How To Catch… series

This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.

The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.

The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.

This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

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WRECKING BALL

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14

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

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