Like the titular pet—lightweight but cute.
A young boy is on cloud nine when he finds the perfect pet, but he is quickly brought down to earth.
Max longs for a pet, but his single mom is “allergic to mess, noise, and animal hair.” So, it’s a great stroke of luck when he finds a little “lost cloud” who is clean, quiet, and doesn’t molt. He immediately adopts it and names it Fluffy. The cloud is sweet and great fun, but caring for him turns out to be “a natural disaster.” Fluffy is frequently swept away by the wind, often precipitates indoors without warning, and even starts a fire when he unwittingly generates lightning. “I just don’t think clouds make good pets,” Mom concludes, and Max undertakes to prove otherwise. He trains Fluffy to water the garden flowers, to scare away pesky critters by thundering loudly, and more. Things are looking up until a thunderstorm blows Fluffy far away. A fruitless search leaves Max resigned to never seeing his cumulus companion again. Luckily, there is always sunshine after a storm, and the two pals’ friendship is not over yet. This fantastical take on the child-pet bond is sweet, with the potential to be clever; alas, the unremarkable writing doesn’t quite rise to the occasion. The digital illustrations are serviceable but not stellar. One perk is a page showing different cloud types. Max and Mom have curly hair and tan skin. One scene, set in a park, includes diverse representation.
Like the titular pet—lightweight but cute. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68446-425-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sweet but misleading.
A plucky child becomes a space traveler.
Arceneaux was the first pediatric cancer survivor and the first with a prosthetic body part to become an astronaut, part of the first all-civilian space mission in 2021. The author, who in 2022 published the adult memoir Wild Ride and its 2023 adaptation for middle-grade readers, here shares her story with an even younger audience. Told in the third person, the narrative emphasizes the bravery she summoned as she coped with a cancer that left her with a prosthetic leg bone and knee (hinted at with an incision line in one illustration) and went on to become a space traveler. Curiously, Hayley and her astronaut colleagues are portrayed as children. They play with a “stuffed toy alien,” and in an imagined episode, Hayley ventures outside the spacecraft to perform a repair. Accompanied by softly hued illustrations with character designs that recall Precious Moments figurines, the narrative emphasizes familiar details of space travel that will appeal to children; both their bodies and their food float in zero gravity. The mission splashes down safely, and Hayley rushes to hug her mom. Though Arceneaux was the youngest astronaut to have orbited the Earth, she was an adult when she did so. The odd choice to depict her as a child reduces her compelling story to a fantasy. Arceneaux is white; other characters are diverse.
Sweet but misleading. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593443903
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Convergent
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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