This retelling of the ancient Greek tale of Arion the musician and his dolphin friend receives fractured, confusing treatment. Arion, court warbler of the tyrant Periander, is allowed leave Corinth to attend a music festival in Sicily. After winning gold, he sails home, but meets with treachery and jumps overboard. Arion is saved by a dolphin, and helped back to his home port. Periander doesn't believe Arion's story; the poet is jailed and the dolphin dies in captivity. Periander abruptly takes Arion back to his bosom. Told as a story/song, there is enough contradictory behavior here to disenchant most readers. The crew and captain are smitten by Arion, then want to kill him; Periander is downright schizophrenic. Prose and lyric never meld, and the rhymes often feel forced: ``With you I will remain,/ For if we part, we'll never meet again,/And I will die of loneliness and pain./ This I maintain.'' The scenery, though lush, has little Grecian fragrance. (Picture book/mythology. 6-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-45384-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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