A warm, vibrant read. It would be wonderful to hear more from Piccadilly and her family.
What do fairies like to eat? Follow the charming Piccadilly to the fairy ring and find out.
On the longest day of the year, the fairies throw a huge party and dance—what else?—the polka. Normally, people can’t see fairies, but the extra sunlight on the summer solstice is captured by the dewdrops, “which triggers a speck of summer delight…which inspires the glow of the fairies!” Or so the fairy prince eventually explains to the delighted Piccadilly, a grinning little girl with a round belly and rounder cheeks. One night, she watches her cat, Rufus, stare intently at a circle of overgrown flowers in the backyard. Probably fireflies, her mother says. But Piccadilly hears “fairy flies” and that night dreams of fairies eating cake. So the next day she enlists her brother’s help in baking a batch of cupcakes. She arranges them in a ring in the garden, right where Rufus had been staring, and unwittingly summons the fairy prince. (Or, maybe, as her mother suggests, she was just dreaming under the tree. “I wish my dreams were as fun as yours,” she says.) Piccadilly’s wide-eyed approach to everything in the world—the real world and the fairy world—is absolutely irresistible. She jumps out of bed in the morning, runs to the garden, dances, bakes, charms her family and fearlessly greets a magical creature, without the slightest skepticism. And it’s clear where little Piccadilly learned her open-mindedness: While both Mom and brother smile wryly at Piccadilly’s tales, neither one teases her or tells her she’s mistaken. What a joy to grow up in a house where fairies are welcome and treated to cake. Novelline (The Dance of Spring, 2011) winds out a story that’s complex enough to bear repeated readings. Light’s illustrations are bright and lively, with colors and shapes that evoke old-school animated films like Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. While all the characters are likable and strong, Piccadilly’s cheeks and nose steal the show.
A warm, vibrant read. It would be wonderful to hear more from Piccadilly and her family.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0983531111
Page Count: 52
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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