This tender version of the Cinderella story comes from the American Southwest. A widow and her two daughters pressure the shepherd Tomás into marriage, and while he spends more and more time with the flocks, his daughter Teresa gets more and more of the chores. When Tomás brings Teresa the gift of a lamb, her stepmother kills it and orders her to wash the fleece. A fish steals the fleece, but Blessed Mary appears to her, and asks her to care for Joseph and the Child for a day. Teresa is rewarded for her kindness by the return of the fleece, and the Virgin touches her forehead so a gold star appears there. When Teresa returns home, the stepsisters are fierce with jealousy, mocking her with the name Estrellita de Oro (Little Gold Star), but when each of them in turn tries for the fleece and the gold star, they fail the kindness test and get horns and donkey’s ears instead. Still, when Don Miguel gives a fine party, the sisters vie for his attention, mantillas over their protuberances. As is to be expected he has eyes only for Teresa, who is then sent home by her stepmother. Don Miguel finds her through the offices of their cat, but the stepmother sets three impossible tasks for Teresa before she will give permission for the marriage. Mary blesses Teresa again, the tasks completed, Teresa and Don Miguel marry, and even the stepsisters learn kindness until their donkey ears and horns disappear. There’s a wonderful translucence to Martínez’s watercolors: light seems to shine through the roses in the Virgin’s path, the candles at Don Miguel’s, even the stepsisters’ black lace mantillas. Little Gold Star has a lovely face, and the stepmother and sisters are properly grumpy. In a year full of Cinderella variations, this one is a welcome addition. (Fairy tale. 6-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-14780-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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There’s lots to see and do in this big city.
A set of panoramic views of the urban environment: inside and out, above and belowground, at street level and high overhead.
Thanks to many flaps, pull tabs, spinners, and sliders, viewers can take peeks into stores and apartments, see foliage change through the seasons in a park, operate elevators, make buildings rise and come down, visit museums and municipal offices, take in a film, join a children’s parade, marvel as Christmas decorations go up—even look in on a wedding and a funeral. Balicevic populates each elevated cartoon view with dozens of tiny but individualized residents diverse in age, skin tone, hair color and style, dress, and occupation. He also adds such contemporary touches as an electrical charging station for cars, surveillance cameras, smartphones, and fiber optic cables. Moreover, many flaps conceal diagrammatic views of infrastructure elements like water treatment facilities and sources of electrical power or how products ranging from plate glass and paper to bread, cheese, and T-shirts are manufactured (realistically, none of the workers in the last are white). Baumann’s commentary is largely dispensable, but she does worthily observe on the big final pop-up spread that cities are always changing—often, nowadays, becoming more environmentally friendly.
There’s lots to see and do in this big city. (Informational novelty. 6-9)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 979-1-02760-079-3
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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