Cole (The Bad Good Manners Book, 1996, etc.) proves that she can fracture more than Emily Post in this eccentric tale subtitled ``Or how we grew from one-year-old bald wrinklies into eighty-year-old bald wrinklies.'' A question from their grandchildren—``Gran and Grandad, why are you such bald old wrinklies?''—prompts two elderly folks to recite the major events of their lives, from birth to the moment they drop dead and are then ``recycled,'' returning as two scrawny chickens. In between they ``learned dribbling and burping . . . driving Dad's car . . . falling in love with the wrong person.'' They become stunt people, marry on location, and have ``your dad,'' a baby who jumps through a flaming hoop and into bed. They lose teeth, go bald, forget things, and recognize that their time will soon be up. In Cole's comical scenes, this couple strides through life together, as if they have known each other since birth—exactly the way children picture their older relatives. Pair this with Margaret Wild's Old Pig (1996) for a fairly complete definition of aging and death—one funny, one tender—aimed at the young. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-88358-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip. The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface. Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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