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CAT TRICKS

Fans of Baker's Hide and Snake (1991) will be happy to encounter this new book of catchy verse and tricky pictures in an intense purple, green, blue, and gold palette, used to depict cats, shoes, hats, clocks, patterned fabrics, and extravagant textures of all kinds. In this tall, narrow book, every other page is half- width; turning it transforms the picture into a completely different scene, showing a dapper black-and-white cat doing something quite improbable. The fun is in seeing how Baker transforms lines or shapes in one picture into something totally different in the next: a spiderweb to a ship's rigging, a sweeping green feather to a curling ocean wave, a loosely tangled plate of spaghetti to skate tracings on a frozen pond, a pair of green curtains to a plunging waterfall. Often an object in the first picture will prefigure something in the second, or the second will contain an echo of the first. In all, an illustrator's tour de force, and a great stimulus to a child's visual imagination. (Picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-15-292857-X

Page Count: 44

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997

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DIARY OF A SPIDER

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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HENRY AND MUDGE AND THE STARRY NIGHT

From the Henry and Mudge series

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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