A unique, playful offering.
A wingless, friendless mosquito performs a musical in a new town.
Highway brings his one-act play to picture-book format: the text is made up of script, song lyrics (with a bit of musical description but no music), and a few stage directions. Accompanied only by her piano player, Mary Jane Mosquito relates her life story. Its primary theme is that she differs from other mosquitoes because she has no wings. The script and songs portray this as a social disability: winglessness, here, prevents friendships. (It also prevents flying, but that’s unimportant.) She solves her lack of friends by befriending the audience of this performance and teaching them words from “my language.” She calls it “the language of mosquitoes,” but it’s actually Cree; Highway is Cree himself. Todd’s linoleum-cut prints, digitally colored, show Mary Jane onstage and in past scenes (in these flashbacks, other characters appear; besides the wings, they look human, as does Mary Jane). This theatrical star’s dress-up and postures evoke Maurice Sendak’s Really Rosie, from his 1975 animated musical with Carole King. Indigenous-style masks, hung as decoration, double as comedy/tragedy masks. Highway’s enthusiastic song lyrics vary in structure and scansion, providing ample creative opportunity for readers who want to sing them. The conflation of disability and unpopularity—Mary Jane, if she has friends, can fly “in [her] heart”—is regrettable. As a play, this would be a piquant choice for a teenage troupe; as a picture book, it’s best used with early elementary children.
A unique, playful offering. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-92708-338-3
Page Count: 70
Publisher: Fifth House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
