It’s a hot day—it’s also a “best-friend-breakup day.” As Miss Johnson works her crossword puzzle and dozes, as Mr. Paul weeds his flower bed, Kishi and Renée remain resolutely apart: it appears that Kishi bought the very last blue ice pop, even though she knows that’s Renée’s favorite. It’s a “never-speak-to-her-again-even-if-she-was-the-last-person-on-earth day.” But then the siren song of jump-rope chanting calls and the girls are reunited in double-dutch—finding final resolution in one last, shared blue ice pop. English has childhood spats down pat, the apocalyptic sundering of a friendship miraculously healed by play. Steptoe’s textured collage illustrations feature tissue-paper clothing over paper skin, all set against a background of rough wooden boards. He renders facial features in a highly naturalistic manner, with outsized lips and flat noses; it’s an effect that may initially be off-putting for readers accustomed to smooth prettiness, but the total effect is both original and emotionally effective (particularly when the girls are squinty-mad, the ugliness of their emotions showing up clearly on their faces). The final scenes, of play and ice pops, are full of movement and energy and joy. “So good!” (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-395-98527-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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