A solid picture book for families looking for a new spin on car-racing stories.
Noah Gouda craves a victory in a lunar car-racing competition in DaVeiga’s picture book.
Noah lives on a moon made of cheese and dreams of driving in its biggest race: the Great Amoonican Grand Brie. A year out from the big event, Noah and best friend Bleu build their racer, the Muenster Monster. They’re thrilled by their creation until they realize that Noah is too short to reach the pedals. By the time the Grand Brie rolls around, Noah has grown enough to drive the car, so he and Bleu enter the race at the last second. They’re up against a number of formidable opponents like Mac N. Cheese, Gorgonzilla, Hank the Hunk, and Betty Cheddar. The Monster’s competition slowly falls away until it’s just Noah and Bleu against Betty in the final turns of the track. This fresh installment in the Biff Bam Booza series is chock-full of cheese-based wordplay, from Noah Gouda’s name to “It could happen, you know? Once in a Bleu moon!” Peres’ illustrations pull inspiration from the bold lines, panels, and dialogue bubbles of comics illustrations to enhance the excitement. Although Noah’s problems solve themselves at two key moments rather too miraculously, that still doesn’t spoil what is ultimately a fun read.
A solid picture book for families looking for a new spin on car-racing stories.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781958050125
Page Count: 43
Publisher: Waterhole Productions LLC
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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