What is it about cats and moons? Here Oscar, who loves high places, takes a mighty leap from the rooftop and actually reaches the Moon—where he finds lots of silvery feline playmates and a crater filled with sweet cream left by a passing cow. Just in time he also finds out that tasting that cream would make him forget his beloved boy back on Earth. That would never do, so home he goes though, as usual, getting down is much harder than going up. Pairing a small striped cat and a lad oddly topped with short blue dreads, Ceccoli incorporates photographs, collage elements and figures resembling small plastic toys into elaborately worked digital starscapes that have a convincingly 3-D look. Young readers who wonder where cats go at night will find this an equally free-range alternative to the likes of Bruce Ingman’s Night on the Tiles (1999), Helen Landalf’s Secret Night Life of Cats (1998), illustrated by Mark Rimland, or David Almond’s Kate, the Cat and the Moon (2005), illustrated by Stephen Lambert. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-56316-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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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