Lays a liberating message on helicopter parents and their overprotected offspring.
Visions of his uncle Humpty’s fate curtail a cautious young egg's actions on an outing to the park.
With the warnings of his anxious parents ringing in his ears (“AND NEVER, EVER SIT ON A WALL!”), rotund Humphrey ventures timorously outside, where he falls in with a disheveled, red-haired, light-skinned dynamo named Princess Jean (“call me PJ”) who urges an uncertain Humphrey to join her in climbing trees, playing catch, and like terrifying business. When PJ’s tales of her own misadventures prove so absorbing that neither notices the park closing, the only way to get out is…climbing the high wall. “Just don’t look down!” she warns. Oh, dear. If this were a Jon Klassen story, that would likely be the end, but Hanaor and Wynter have a different idea. Humphrey may be depicted in the loose-lined cartoonish illustrations as a deceptively fragile-looking egg with stubby stick limbs and an anxious expression, but he emerges from his great fall unexpectedly intact, and PJ squires him off to her family’s castle, where he gets an earful from one of the king’s horses about what really happened to his yarn-spinning uncle. His worldview undergoes a transformation. “It’s important to be careful. But if you’re too careful all the time, you miss out on all the fun!” The human cast is diverse.
Lays a liberating message on helicopter parents and their overprotected offspring. (Graphic fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781800660434
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Cicada Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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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
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