An exceptionally bright and beautiful masterpiece.
A spectacular iPad adaptation of Anholt’s children’s book about van Gogh, his art and his friendship with a French family.
When van Gogh moved to Arles, France, in 1888, a postman and his family befriended the Dutch painter. This book is about what may have happened during van Gogh’s time in Arles, as seen from the perspective of the young boy in the Roulin family, Camille. Anholt’s magnificent illustrations quite literally spring to life, as 3-D figures and characters “pop out” and move, then collapse back into the two-dimensional background when the page is turned. Each page displays a cog in the upper left-hand corner that, when touched, produces an x-ray image of the armature that animates the moving parts. Touch a character, and a window pops up with two options. The first, most appropriately, is a painter’s palette that affords readers several tools with which to paint the characters. The second is a set of cogs that summons the x-ray armature again, but when tapped the mechanism collapses and readers race the clock to reassemble it. There’s a museum feature embedded in the story whereby readers can view and learn about many of the famous paintings van Gogh painted while living in Arles. Narration is easily switched off or on, and though navigation isn’t exceptionally speedy, it’s appropriately timed and precise.
An exceptionally bright and beautiful masterpiece. (iPad storybook app. 6-12)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Auryn
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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