This gloomy girl’s transformation to happy camper is worth embracing, silent or not
A young girl finds she can be happy without her newfound token of joy in an app that favors striking visuals over sound design or needless frills.
Forever frowning amid the gloom of cold rain and loneliness, a child identified only as “the grumpy girl” finds a bright yellow hat with a red ribbon. The fancy hat brings sunny days, flying kites and ice cream cones. “With her fancy hat, she laughed harder, smiled brighter, and felt like the happiest girl in the world.” The girl temporarily loses her favorite new item of clothing but discovers quickly that she can be just as happy without the hat. With its well-executed, painterly illustrations, the app is more sophisticated than it first appears. The visuals favor subtle shifts of perspective over full-blown animation. Movement is activated by tilting the iPad in different directions to make the scenes breathe in unexpected ways. There are no extra features, not even page numbers, and the lack of sound effects, music or narration creates a silence that only seems noticeable when compared to the tweedles and beeps of competing iPad storybooks. A fierce seaside storm and a bus splashing through a puddle seem made for sound cues, but in this case, the decision to embrace silence works fine. The text isn’t revelatory, but its message of building happiness from within comes across clearly.
This gloomy girl’s transformation to happy camper is worth embracing, silent or not . (iPad storybook app. 4-10)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Sequence Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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