An engaging celebration of ambition and the imagination with magical illustrations.
A young woman achieves her dream of becoming a magician with the help of her rabbit in this children’s book.
Holly Foster, a brown-skinned, freckled, curly-haired woman, loves performing magic with her white rabbit, Buddy. “I wish we could do this every day,” she tells her companion after a children’s show. In a flashback to Holly’s childhood, readers see that she has loved magic from a young age, admiring her Uncle Bob, a magician. When told girls “can only be a magician’s assistant” by a boy in her class, Holly ignores his comment, pulling a coin from behind his ear. Uncle Bob gives her Buddy and, when he retires after an “Indian Rope Trick” gone awry, leaves her his magician’s trunk. Buddy wants to help Holly become a full-time, professional magician. He reads Uncle Bob’s books and plans a way for her to perform an exceptional trick at the “Night of the New Magicians” event. Holly creates a perfect illusion, allowing her to realize her dream. While the story of a supportive anthropomorphic rabbit and a talented magician works well, Maret leaves readers with some key questions. There are no answers as to why Holly struggles to become a full-time magician and why there are so few female practitioners. And her day job, hinted at, is never described. At one point, Buddy leaves their apartment to enlist neighborhood animals for assistance, but the final trick he and Holly execute involves no extra creatures. When Holly performs her fancy illusion, Buddy initially waves the wand, making it seem as though she is functioning as the assistant, a role she rejected as a child. These quibbles aside, the author’s accessible text and calm, repeated refrain about Buddy’s “rabbity way” of helping will appeal to young would-be magicians. Behrend’s oil pastel illustrations, which feature a diverse array of magicians and audience members, match the book’s tone. They capture the whimsical, beautiful finale in a way that feels like magic. Behrend also sneaks in images of the covers of her title The Survivor Tree (2017) and Maret’s The Cloud Artist (2017) in a classroom where Holly performs a trick.
An engaging celebration of ambition and the imagination with magical illustrations.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-937054-76-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: The RoadRunner Press
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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