Look out, Pecos Bill: here comes Cowpoke Pete, the newest hero of the Wild West. Told in a style as rollicking and rowdy as the opening sequence to Monday Night Football, this entry into the tall-tale tradition will leave readers breathless and happily exhausted. Schnetzler (Ten Little Dinosaurs, not reviewed) leaves no stone in the desert unturned in fulfilling her no-less-high ambition of explaining how the Painted Desert, Mexican Hat, and Monument Valley came to exist. Widdermaker is the biggest, orneriest bull still undefeated and Cowpoke Pete just doesn’t accept that any varmint can’t be beaten. So he lassos the “meanest, low-downest bull” and he and his trusty horse, Desert Rose, go for a ride neither will ever forget, leaving a transformed landscape in their wake. Just in case this raucous read aloud doesn’t get you, newcomer Sealock’s illustrations will. Though the art’s not to everyone’s taste, the high drama of the colors, elongated and distorted figures, and splashy paint convey the gigantic energy and high adventure that carries the narrative to its crescendo. Try to stay on if you can. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-87614-647-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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