Edsel, a red-headed, blue-eyed boy, orders a life-sized model car in the mail. His room is filled with toy cars, auto...
Automotively named Edsel McFarlan loves model cars and has a thrilling high-octane adventure when the toy of his dreams arrives in this visually zippy app that ultimately fails to kick into high gear on the interactive lane.
Edsel, a red-headed, blue-eyed boy, orders a life-sized model car in the mail. His room is filled with toy cars, auto posters, hubcaps and license plates. In the slickly illustrated pages of the app, based on a 2010 book, Edsel's delighted grins and body language lovingly capture the laser-focused obsession of a young boy in love with a hobby. When Edsel finishes his new model and takes it for a spin through town, the story amusingly follows Edsel through (seemingly harmless) trips through back yards, across an intersection and into a construction site. The intentionally simple and direct text ("The steering wheel turned the front tires") are a counterweight to the packed illustrations, which feature many background details, characters and life-like clutter. If only the app was as attention-oriented. The too-straightforward adaptation features narration and displays the names of objects on screen aloud, but that's about the extent of its interactivity. Such a motion-filled story could have benefited from a little animation or at least the inclusion of sound effects. (Pages that feature sound effects like "SNAP" or "KAR-EEK" spelled out in text cry out for aural accompaniment.)Pub Date: June 8, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Auryn
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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