This original tale was suggested by The Storytelling Stone, a traditional Seneca tale, and explains how stories began. In the time before people told stories, Papa tended goats and played the flute while Mama cooked and cared for two children and wove tapestries. One day she sends the boy to pick strawberries; when his pail is full he sits down on a flat rock where a snake lies coiled. The snake offers stories in exchange for the berries, weaving his tales of how the stars were once bees and why monkeys live in trees. Arriving home with an empty pail, the boy tells his mother a snake ate them. Next, the girl is sent to pick raspberries and the same thing happens. No berries for dinner. When Mama sends them both to pick apples, the snake tells more tales and swallows half the apples. When Papa tells about seeing a strange lumpy snake, the children laugh and retell all of the snake’s stories. The pages are filled with Heo’s (Sometimes I’m Bombaloo, p. 53, etc.) familiar stylized illustrations of pencil and oil, with swirls, circular patterns of images, and dome-shaped trees. The folksiness of the artwork matches the charming story. The double spread with the large, red snake with many lumps will have kids giggling. Ripe for a storyteller’s voice. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-439-31769-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
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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