A fresh, sweet and motivational children’s tale.
A princess learns a lesson about putting things away in Fields’ colorful debut rhyming storybook.
Princess Cupcake Jones wears her pink high-tops outside, sensible pom-pom slippers indoors, and her bright, multicolored tutu everywhere. She believes that horseback riding and picture painting are perfect activities to do in a tutu; she’d even sleep in it if Mommy, the queen, would let her. But during portrait day at the palace, Cupcake’s tutu goes missing. She first interrogates her dolls and stuffed animals with a serious, skeptical expression; after getting no clues, she wonders if the tutu has been stolen by fairies or by a witch flying on a broomstick. LaDuca’s softly shaded illustrations show Cupcake’s worried, inquisitive face as she looks up into her mother’s caring eyes; on the following page, readers see the witch and chubby cherubs that the princess imagines. When Cupcake’s mother suggests that she wear a dress for the portrait, she cries, “It just isn’t me! If I hurry I’ll find my tutu, you’ll see!” She then embarks on a frantic search for the missing garment. The book portrays the palace as a big, warm place—a cross between a fairy-tale dream and a contemporary home. Cupcake brings spunk and joie de vivre to her quest, as she finds possessions she thought she’d lost, including a red ball, a magic book and a pink teddy bear. Later, she encounters a kind-faced white-mustachioed cook; her father, the king; and a disappointingly tutu-less washing machine. Encouraged by Mommy’s advice to take better care with her belongings, Cupcake starts organizing, grabs a broom and does a blissful leap, duster in hand, over a twinkling floor. The princess eventually learns to appreciate her various possessions, and finds her tutu in a surprising place. Children are often motivated by deep attachments to objects, and Fields delivers a practical message, apparently aimed at a multiethnic, female audience. Despite a couple of moments of awkward diction, this book could become a favorite of both parents and youngsters.
A fresh, sweet and motivational children’s tale.Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0578113036
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Belle Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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