Plainly unable to stay out of mischief for long, Stanley and his canine buddies embark on a third escapade after Stanley’s Party (2003) and Stanley’s Wild Ride (2006)—this one with cosmic overtones. Slouching away from his picnicking human family, Stanley joins Nutsy, Alice and Gassy Jack in sniffing out an unattended ham sandwich. They find it in a small rowboat that proceeds to carry them down the river and out onto the scary sea. Could they be on their way to the end of Outside? What will they find there? A fence, undoubtedly, because “sooner or later you always come to a fence.” Once again, Bailey endows her characters with believably doggy thought processes, and the pop-eyed, floppy-eared figures in Slavin’s textured paint-on-gesso scenes positively exude enthusiasm, if not intelligence. Soon a “fence” looms up, in the form of a freighter’s towering hull; the dogs are rescued, fed steak and sausage until they can barely move and then rowed back to land. The tale of how they found pooch paradise quickly becomes a legend throughout dogdom: “No dog has ever found that fence,” Bailey concludes, “but they think about it all the time.” The spiritual metaphor may need some explaining to children, but Stanley’s waggish appeal will win over readers young or grown. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-55453-193-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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