Pretty but unexceptional considering the many comparable versions, conventional and otherwise, available.
A plainspoken retelling of the classic tale with dreamy illustrations.
In an uncredited translation from Dutch, Leysen pairs a shortened and lightly massaged retelling of the LePrince de Beaumont version to diaphanous views of Belle—a strawberry-blonde white waif with exaggeratedly wide-set eyes over a rosebud mouth—and a well-groomed, goat-headed Beast who looks more vulnerable than fearsome. Hearing her father’s tale (complete with the Beast’s “Alright! I’ll let you live, on one condition…”), Belle rides off to durance far-from-vile, where she resists the Beast’s nightly proposals. When lonely Belle goes home to visit, she is drugged by her “lazy and insufferable” sister (there’s just one in this version), dreams of Beast’s decline, and wakes up “bathed in sweat” to hie back to the castle and declare her love. Next day at the wedding her sister is transformed by the fairy who had earlier transformed the Beast into a statue until “a kind prince would come by to melt her heart.” Belle’s bed in the pictures is different than the one described in the narrative, and occasional monochrome drawings serve no evident purpose except to make the suite of languid illustrations look unfinished.
Pretty but unexceptional considering the many comparable versions, conventional and otherwise, available. (Picture book/fairy tale. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60537-251-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Clavis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book....
From funeral clown to cheese sculptor, a tally of atypical trades.
This free-wheeling survey, framed as a visit to “The Great Hall of Jobs,” is designed to shake readers loose from simplistic notions of the world of work. Labarre opens with a generic sculpture gallery of, as she puts it, “The Classics”—doctor, dancer, farmer, athlete, chef, and the like—but quickly moves on, arranging busy cartoon figures by the dozen in kaleidoscopic arrays, with pithy captions describing each occupation. As changes of pace she also tucks in occasional challenges to match select workers (Las Vegas wedding minister, “ethical” hacker, motion-capture actor) with their distinctive tools or outfits. The actual chances of becoming, say, the queen’s warden of the swans or a professional mattress jumper, not to mention the nitty-gritty of physical or academic qualifications, income levels, and career paths, are left largely unspecified…but along with noting that new jobs are being invented all the time (as, in the illustration, museum workers wheel in a “vlogger” statue), the author closes with the perennial insight that it’s essential to love what you do and the millennial one that there’s nothing wrong with repeatedly switching horses midstream. The many adult figures and the gaggle of children (one in a wheelchair) visiting the “Hall” are diverse of feature, sex, and skin color.
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1219-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Two-digit subtraction is the subject of this MathStart picture book, which beats its one-note song slowly and relentlessly. Murphy builds this story, the latest in his series of math fundamentals, around a group of young shark swimmers who have a chance to attend swim camp if they can complete 75 laps among themselves over a week’s time. The coach has set up an easel by the pool, tallying their laps and then subtracting them from the running total on the easel. And that, quite simply, is how far Murphy takes the narrative, if such flimsy material can be called a story. There is nothing here to entice any child who is anxious, uninterested, or confused about math to get involved with either the subtraction or the story angle of the book. Murphy might just as well have presented a handful of subtraction problems on each page and forgotten all about the vapid story line, because the only kids who will find interest in these pages are those who really love mathematics, and there isn’t enough here for them to chew on to any satisfaction. (Picture book. 7-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028030-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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