Rich visuals evoke the parts of creative play that are hard for children to describe.
A boy’s drab verbal narrative contrasts with action-packed illustrations of fantastic adventures.
A small boy reading a book casts a horned shadow on his bedroom wall; he startles when his mother enters and asks, in the tradition of parents everywhere, what he did today. The White child narrator’s rote recitation, though lengthy, is empty of particularities: He grabbed his lunch, almost forgot his book bag, and then spent a day in school, played with friends, went home, and ate dinner. Author/illustrator Molinet’s accompanying images tell a far richer story packed with fantasies of jungle exploration, Indiana Jones–style escapes, a glass-domed space school where tentacled aliens teach classes to spacesuit-clad children, and a home life where Viking lord Dad roasts meat on a spit and serves it in front of a roaring castle fire. Best friend Jake, who’s Black, and Emily, who’s White, accompany our protagonist. Many of the fantasies are a tad overworked, with formulaic safari hats and swords-and-sorcery medieval props made interesting via the artwork’s detail and style. Scratchy crosshatched lines, creative composition, and digital painting in muted warm tones evoke indie comics of the early 1990s, and there is plenty of interest and light humor; a pickup game of football, for instance, becomes a battle between Vikings and armored knights over a startled live pig. Constant narration occasionally distracts from the images; readers may wish that parts of the book were textless to give more room to interpretation.
Rich visuals evoke the parts of creative play that are hard for children to describe.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73335-484-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Notable Kids Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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