A likely hit with young eco-activists, despite the bland visuals.
A Guatemalan community turns trash to treasure, thanks to a teacher’s “crazy idea.”
It all starts when Seño Laura, taking a break by the frame of a never-finished new school one day, notices that the soda bottle in her hand is the same width as the structural supports. Her principal, the children at the overcrowded local school and the other residents of Granados are quickly enlisted to gather thousands of discarded plastic bottles and stuff them with trash to create “eco-ladrillos” (bricks) and stack them into walls. Much hard work later—and much of it done by energetic young Fernando and other children—the village not only has a fine school, but has been thoroughly cleaned of litter to boot. Better yet, other communities have been inspired by Granados’ example to undertake similar projects of their own. Only some of the figures in Darragh’s very loose ink-and-watercolor illustrations have individualized features, and her pale palette doesn’t really capture the distinctively vibrant look of soda-bottle walls (a photo at the end offers a tantalizing glimpse). Nevertheless, this true story celebrates both the value of teamwork and a triumph of ingenious recycling.
A likely hit with young eco-activists, despite the bland visuals. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-88448-371-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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