Keep plugging, follow your muse, find your right fit in the world. Fine sentiments, though they might need a little more...
Arnold’s story app of a cow trying to find her calling is minimalist in every way, except some handsome artwork from Manders.
Lily, a bit of a freethinking, free-hoofing bovine living on a farm in Wisconsin, has an inkling that her hooves were made for more than support in the milking stall. Soon it will be her turn to take her Grandmoo’s place as the “bell cow,” the leader of the herd, but where Lily goes, chaos reigns. Surely, somewhere in the world, there is a place for a dancing bell cow. So off she ambles, in search of her calling. As Lily makes her world tour, Manders provides good scenic backdrops, but Lily is a klutz. Whatever she tries, she gives up right away. Until, that is, the conga crosses her path, a basic step-and-thrust with which even the most challenged cow can find the rhythm. For all the gumption Lily shows in taking to the wide-open road from her little farm in Wisconsin, it’s too bad she’s such a milquetoast when confronted with the flamenco, the tap dance or even the Senegalese stilt dance. The translation from Arnold’s 2004 traditional book to interactive app adds little beyond rudimentary animations and sound effects. A puzzle game offers three levels of difficulty.
Keep plugging, follow your muse, find your right fit in the world. Fine sentiments, though they might need a little more nerve than Lily is willing to give. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Fat Red Couch
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
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
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