A family wakes up when you open this book, yawning and stretching and looking up at you. They live right there between the two covers, and now their hyper-metafictive day has begun. Everyone but the little girl has a different story: The father works as a juggling clown, the mother is a fire fighter, the brother plans to explore space—even the cat’s off to hunt mice. The little girl dashes across the succeeding pages in search of her own story, led by a motherly goose. Gerstein’s awkward aerial perspective forces readers to look mostly at the tops of the foreshortened characters’ heads and crane their necks to assess busy page spreads. Moments when characters gaze up and connect with the reading audience offer brief thrills, but allusions to nursery rhymes, folktales, mystery and adventure genres as possible stories for the girl hit readers in such fast succession they may well dizzy. The girl’s ultimate decision to write her own story until bedtime provides an ending to this disorienting and undeniably clever novelty, for whom the natural audience is unclear. (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59643-251-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
Trickling, bubbling, swirling, rushing, a river flows down from its mountain beginnings, past peaceful country and bustling city on its way to the sea. Hooper (The Drop in My Drink, 1998, etc.) artfully evokes the water’s changing character as it transforms from “milky-cold / rattling-bold” to a wide, slow “sliding past mudflats / looping through marshes” to the end of its journey. Willey, best known for illustrating Geraldine McCaughrean’s spectacular folk-tale collections, contributes finely detailed scenes crafted in shimmering, intricate blues and greens, capturing mountain’s chill, the bucolic serenity of passing pastures, and a sense of mystery in the water’s shadowy depths. Though Hooper refers to “the cans and cartons / and bits of old wood” being swept along, there’s no direct conservation agenda here (for that, see Debby Atwell’s River, 1999), just appreciation for the river’s beauty and being. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0792-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
McDonald’s irrepressible third-grader (Judy Moody Gets Famous, 2001, etc.) takes a few false steps before hitting full stride. This time, not only has her genius little brother Stink submitted a competing entry in the Crazy Strips Band-Aid design contest, but in the wake of her science teacher’s heads-up about rainforest destruction and endangered animals, she sees every member of her family using rainforest products. It’s all more than enough to put her in a Mood, which gets her in trouble at home for letting Stink’s pet toad, Toady, go free, and at school for surreptitiously collecting all the pencils (made from rainforest cedar) in class. And to top it off, Stink’s Crazy Strips entry wins a prize, while she gets . . . a certificate. Chronicled amusingly in Reynolds’s frequent ink-and-tea drawings, Judy goes from pillar to post—but she justifies the pencil caper convincingly enough to spark a bottle drive that nets her and her classmates not only a hundred seedling trees for Costa Rica, but the coveted school Giraffe Award (given to those who stick their necks out), along with T-shirts and ice cream coupons. Judy’s growing corps of fans will crow “Rare!” right along with her. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7636-1446-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
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