May inspire a few test drives but lacking in horsepower next to Leo Timmers’ Gus’s Garage (2017) or even Gail Gibbons’ staid...
Over the course of a day, a parade of vehicles from a motorcycle to a fire truck check in to a garage for servicing, mechanical repairs, a paint job, or a wash.
The text promises “a world of great surprises” when the illustrations of this latest entry in the Shine-a-Light series are positioned in front of a light source. The trick does give viewers a sort of X-ray vision that allows glimpses inside tool boxes and a motor home, and they can see through a building to the tow truck that’s parked around a corner. Some of the details hinted at (a mechanic attaching a huge wheel to a heavy-duty tractor, the tail fins of a 1950s-era roadster, and a car emerging from a car wash, for instance) are at least partially visible and easily recognizable in the illustrations, rendering the silhouetted, backlit view something of an anticlimax. Other details (a motorcycle being, well, detailed and underground gasoline storage tanks, for instance) are a bit more interesting. The various vehicles and tools on display are all thoroughly stylized, too. Still, Davis does stock his preternaturally tidy, clean garage with mechanics of both sexes and dark- as well as light-skinned figures, and the author closes with quick descriptive comments about each type of vehicle that stops in.
May inspire a few test drives but lacking in horsepower next to Leo Timmers’ Gus’s Garage (2017) or even Gail Gibbons’ staid Tranportation (2017). (Informational novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61067-598-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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