An intense artistic experience awaits the reader of this highly moral, Malian version of a “magic pot” folktale. Rabbit saves Iguana from his imprisonment in a thorny bush and receives the “magic gourd” with its bottomless bounty as his reward. Rabbit shares his good fortune with everyone, until the avaricious king hears the stories. When the king takes the bowl, Iguana comes to Rabbit’s rescue with a second gift, a magic stone that continually hits the king and forces him to bargain with Rabbit and eventually to return the gourd to him. In fact, he becomes so exasperated that he tells Rabbit to take the food in his storage bins as well as his gold, but when Rabbit leaves with only his rightful possession, the king takes it as a lesson. Diakité educates, entertains, and visually enchants from beginning to end. The back cover is a large, arresting picture of the smiling author-illustrator with his two beautiful daughters, holding a large bowl similar to the ones in the photographic images popping out of the deeply-colored pages of the interior. Richly detailed bowls, plates, sculptures, and textiles display stylized characters and mud cloth patterns that symbolize many concepts meaningful to the Bamana people of Mali. Diakité provides a wealth of explanatory material as well as glossary of Bambara words used in the text that greatly enhances the telling. The last few pages include a praise song and an author’s note about learning stories about the clever Zazani, or Rabbit, in childhood. A description of the traditional mud cloth patterns used as the borders of the tiles and platters offers additional insights and will send the careful reader back to the story again and again. Finally, Diakité ends with a feature found in his earlier works, The Hunterman and the Crocodile (1997) and The Hatseller and the Monkeys (1999): the description of the international variants of this type of tale. Richly rewarding indeed. (Folktale. 5-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-43960-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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