Despite the issues with the limping narrative, the illustrations successfully hold the story together while conjuring a...
A stone in a child’s shoe triggers an avalanche of small misfortunes.
From a canoe-paddling cricket to a disgruntled trout to a hungry but thwarted bird—all have had a perfectly fine day ruined by the pebble’s erratic trajectory. It’s unfortunate that Howell’s narrative poem also meanders erratically. The meter ricochets from stanza to stanza as it collides with a rhyming pattern that hiccups and stumbles its way through this circular tale. “ ‘Whoa!’ said the cricket. ‘A boulder—I’m sunk!’ / He dumped it, it dropped… // on a trout with a clunk. / ‘Ugh!’ said the trout. ‘This is too tough to chew!’ // He spat it, it soared… // toward a duck’s good-as-new flowered / umbrella she’d brought to the zoo.” These and other sentence constructions defy most read-aloud attempts. It’s unfortunate that they distract from Carr’s layered, cut-paper dioramas. The sepia-toned silhouettes convey remarkable depth of field, as in one double-page spread in which an ant pushes the boulder-sized pebble across a meadow, the field grasses in the foreground blurred while the ant and pebble in the rear of the image stand out crisply.
Despite the issues with the limping narrative, the illustrations successfully hold the story together while conjuring a wistful air of yesteryear. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9913866-5-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Ripple Grove
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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
As Captain Awesome would say, this kid is “MI-TEE!” (Fiction. 5-8)
The town of Sunnyview got a little bit safer when 8-year-old Eugene McGillicudy moved in.
Just like his comic-book mentor, Super Dude, Eugene, aka Captain Awesome, is on a one-man mission is to save the world from supervillains, like the nefarious “Queen Stinkypants from Planet Baby.” Just as Eugene suspected, plenty of new supervillains await him at Sunnyview Elementary. Are Meredith Mooney and the mind-reading Ms. Beasley secretly working together to try and force Eugene to reveal his secret identity? Will Principal Brick Foot succeed in throwing Captain Awesome into the “Dungeon of Detention?” Fortunately, Eugene isn’t forced to go it alone. Charlie Thomas Jones, fellow comic-book lover and Super Dude fan, stands ready and willing to help. When the class hamster goes missing, Captain Awesome must don his cape and, with the help of his new best friend, ride to the rescue. Kirby’s funny and engaging third-person narration and O’Connor’s hilarious illustrations make the book easily accessible and enormously appealing, particularly to readers who have recently graduated to chapter books. But it is the quirky, mischievous Eugene that really makes this book special. His energy and humor are contagious, and his dogged commitment to his superhero alter ego is enough to make anyone a believer.
As Captain Awesome would say, this kid is “MI-TEE!” (Fiction. 5-8)Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4090-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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