At a faux-woodgrain fruitstand rifled with lushly painted fruit, an old woman buys strawberries. Here and throughout, only her gnomelike face and her hands are painted like the rest of the picture; her flat gray form matches and bleeds into the background. This allows for some tricky hide-and-seek later, when the Gray Lady is being pursued by the Snatcher—an electric blue creature clad in luminescent green cape and purple slouch hat, who seems a kiddie-cartoon version of a psychedelic-album-cover grotesque. Lurking now outside the fruitstand, the Snatcher trails the Lady past showcased pastry and other window displays. He reaches out but misses, as snakes from a passing Indian woman's basket form a surrealistic barrier between him and the poster-basic bus the Lady is boarding. Riding the Indian woman's skateboard, the Snatcher reappears at the end of the bus line, and the terror mounts. The Gray Lady flees from him through a thicket of reaching, Rackhamesque trees, and leads him into deeper, pretty greenery . . . where he stops, turns, plunges into a sunlit, lacy blackberry glade, and feasts blissfully on the berries. Thus saved, the Gray Lady shows up in her patterned, textured parlor and distributes strawberries to a family of six—which includes another gnomelike woman, outlandishly dressed in striped leg warmers. The jacket flap calls this wordless string of gratuitous effects an allegory, which we will accept as part of the joke.
Pub Date: March 1, 1980
ISBN: 0689803818
Page Count: -
Publisher: Four Winds/MacMillan
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1980
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Thought-provoking and charming.
A sophisticated robot—with the capacity to use senses of sight, hearing, and smell—is washed to shore on an island, the only robot survivor of a cargo of 500.
When otters play with her protective packaging, the robot is accidently activated. Roz, though without emotions, is intelligent and versatile. She can observe and learn in service of both her survival and her principle function: to help. Brown links these basic functions to the kind of evolution Roz undergoes as she figures out how to stay dry and intact in her wild environment—not easy, with pine cones and poop dropping from above, stormy weather, and a family of cranky bears. She learns to understand and eventually speak the language of the wild creatures (each species with its different “accent”). An accident leaves her the sole protector of a baby goose, and Roz must ask other creatures for help to shelter and feed the gosling. Roz’s growing connection with her environment is sweetly funny, reminiscent of Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family. At every moment Roz’s actions seem plausible and logical yet surprisingly full of something like feeling. Robot hunters with guns figure into the climax of the story as the outside world intrudes. While the end to Roz’s benign and wild life is startling and violent, Brown leaves Roz and her companions—and readers—with hope.
Thought-provoking and charming. (Science fiction/fantasy. 7-11)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38199-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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