Children who enjoy searching out every last item in the I Spy series will enjoy this complex search-and-find puzzle and story combination with over 200 items to find throughout the volume. The premise involves a boy named Tommy who is sent to a magical place called Christmas City to meet his aunt Jeanne. The shiny red cover shows Tommy flying off to Christmas City in the magical yellow taxi-sleigh his aunt has hired for the journey. She is always hovering in the background, leaving rhyming notes for her nephew about the next location on his journey. Garland’s (The President and Mom’s Apple Pie, 2002, etc.) computer-generated art is the real reason for the volume, with surrealistic layers of architectural elements, characters in costumes from different periods, and dozens of letters, names, elves, and angels to locate and count. (Motivated readers will need pencil and paper to keep track of all the elements as they search.) The basic categories are explained in an initial rhyming note from Aunt Jeanne, and the final page gives more specific guidelines with a longer note in script that winds around the page like a maze. The story concludes when Tommy finally finds his aunt waiting for him (on Santa’s lap), holding a wrapped present for her nephew. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-46904-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
A touching, beautifully illustrated story of greatest interest to those in the New York City area.
A pair of cardinals is separated and then reunited when their tree home is moved to New York City to serve as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
The male cardinal, Red, and his female partner, Lulu, enjoy their home in a huge evergreen tree located in the front yard of a small house in a pleasant neighborhood. When the tree is cut down and hauled away on a truck, Lulu is still inside the tree. Red follows the truck into the city but loses sight of it and gets lost. The birds are reunited when Red finds the tree transformed with colored lights and serving as the Christmas tree in a complex of city buildings. When the tree is removed after Christmas, the birds find a new home in a nearby park. Each following Christmas, the pair visit the new tree erected in the same location. Attractive illustrations effectively handle some difficult challenges of dimension and perspective and create a glowing, magical atmosphere for the snowy Christmas trees. The original owners of the tree are a multiracial family with two children; the father is African-American and the mother is white. The family is in the background in the early pages, reappearing again skating on the rink at Rockefeller Center with their tree in the background.
A touching, beautifully illustrated story of greatest interest to those in the New York City area. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7733-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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