A welcome addition to any folk-tale collection, this clever retelling and its warm, embracing illustrations demonstrate the...
A 21st-century update to Aesop’s enduring fable finds cousins City Mouse and Country Mouse spending time in each other’s locale to realize that they both prefer life at home.
Flowing acrylic-based gouache illustrations give this retelling a modern twist. Alternating between Mousetropolis and the countryside, the tale opens with City Mouse, who is annoyed with the incessant loud noise of the city. Receiving a letter from his cousin Country Mouse, City Mouse seizes upon the rural vacation opportunity. Although he lets loose at the farmhouse jamboree, City Mouse finds it hard to adjust to the eerily “quiet” surroundings. The food is different, the natural sounds and silences are creepy, and City Mouse can’t shake the feeling of being watched. They agree to a new plan. Country Mouse and City Mouse jump a train to the city. There’s dancing in the subways, ample food, and phalanxes of device-attached mice doing “important things”—and back home goes Country Mouse. Christie utilizes appealingly mouse-based language—“quicker than a mouse can nibble through a wheel of provolone”—to tell his story, and he carefully acknowledges the dangers of country life as well as those of the city. The illustrations effectively depict the dislocated mice’s subjective impressions of each setting; the tilt of an eyebrow communicates emotion.
A welcome addition to any folk-tale collection, this clever retelling and its warm, embracing illustrations demonstrate the enduring appeal of this classic tale. (Picture book/folk tale. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2319-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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