Young Raney Cloud’s luck isn’t all that turns around in this folksy debut. Determined to win a blue ribbon at last at the Washita County Fair, Raney whips up a batch of Sooner Biscuits—only to have it burn while she’s out tending to her beloved nag Thunder. And the flour bin’s empty. Despite gathering clouds, Raney sets off for the store—and meets a tornado on the way back that picks her up—horse, wagon, flour, and all—spins her across the sky, and sets her down gently just outside her farmhouse. Even though her biscuits, made from storm-sifted flour, are now lighter than air, they still don’t take first place—but when she feeds them to Old Thunder, he kicks up his heels and beats all comers in the plow-horse race. With her long, red, frizzy braid flying behind, Raney makes an appealingly disheveled figure in Brown’s (Old Woman Who Named Things, 1996, etc.) fine-lined, pale-hued watercolors. Smaller sketches drawn to suggest old sepia photographs add to the bygone-days flavor of this triumphant, slightly tall whirlwind of a tale. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7894-2619-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look...
Winning actually isn’t everything, as jazz-happy Rooster learns when he goes up against the legendary likes of Mules Davis and Ella Finchgerald at the barnyard talent show.
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look good—particularly after his “ ‘Hen from Ipanema’ [makes] / the barnyard chickies swoon.”—but in the end the competition is just too stiff. No matter: A compliment from cool Mules and the conviction that he still has the world’s best band soon puts the strut back in his stride. Alexander’s versifying isn’t always in tune (“So, he went to see his cousin, / a pianist of great fame…”), and despite his moniker Rooster plays an electric bass in Bower’s canted country scenes. Children are unlikely to get most of the jokes liberally sprinkled through the text, of course, so the adults sharing it with them should be ready to consult the backmatter, which consists of closing notes on jazz’s instruments, history and best-known musicians.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58536-688-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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