A historic typewriter saves the day—and might even be around to stay
When a family computer goes kaput, a famous, but forgotten, typewriter comes to the rescue.
Once upon a time, the story starts, there was a typewriter: “Its pale yellow keys were held up by crooked metal elbows. Its gleaming silver arm stuck out like it wanted to shake your hand.” The typewriter has an impressive history: Its owner, Pearl, typed pamphlets for Martin Luther King on it, and her daughter, Penelope, used it to type a book for which she won a poetry prize. Years later when the computer moves in, the typewriter is relegated to an attic shelf. Then, one day Penelope’s son, Pablo, must write a paper about penguins for school. He doesn’t want to do it, and in a delightfully funny Give-a-Mouse-a-Cookie vein, one play activity leads to another until it’s after dinnertime. He buckles down, completes his research, is poised to write and then—his father’s computer freezes, and he’s sunk. But his mother digs out the cobweb-covered typewriter from the attic; Pablo, puzzled, asks where the screen is and how to plug it in. She explains how it works, and before long, he’s happily clickety-clacking away on it. This is a lovely, full-circle kind of story, related in bouncy writing characterized by gently percussive onomatopoeia, with expressive, appropriately retro illustrations in muted colors. Though it figures little in the plot, it’s heartening to see via the illustrations that the story involves a multiracial family.
A historic typewriter saves the day—and might even be around to stay . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-56792-518-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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