A raging storm is prelude to a miracle at sea. Battering rain, howling wind and the crash of waves add up to danger off the coast of the Farne Islands in England. Inside the lighthouse, Gracie the cat and her kitten are warm and snug in the parlor. The sound of running footsteps intrigues the kitten, who rushes to investigate. The front door is open—the lighthouse keeper and his daughter are braving the choppy waters in their rowboat to rescue passengers of a wrecked ship—and a gale-force wind lifts the kitten and deposits him in the sea. Gracie is distraught; as the rescued climb the stone steps to the lighthouse, she cries frantically. But it's hopeless...until she spots the kitten, soaking wet and terrified and clinging to the rocks. Gracie picks him up and whisks him to safety. This tale of feline excitement takes place with the true-life story of Grace Darling's famous 1838 rescue as its backdrop. Readers can see Grace and her father and the soggy ship's passengers they save from the battering seas, although the very simple text focuses only on Gracie and the kitten. (Brief notes on the endpapers fill in the history.) Brown's elegant pictures (no one does cats quite like her) suggest, in the best possible way, Classics Illustrated comics, and her story is similarly robust and interesting. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7613-7454-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Andersen Press USA
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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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