Unconvincing text distracts from utterly enchanting illustration.
A lonely child encounters a new diversion in a new home.
The story begins with Lorenzo, a little boy with blue, gogglelike glasses and pink skin, preparing to move to a new house with his mother. In the car, a classic “when I was your age…” from Mom sets the tone in an unsuccessful attempt to pull him from his cellphone to admire the scenery from the car window or the spacious property of their new house. The structure is strange and empty of all but unfamiliar smells and a peculiar notebook hidden in an antique writing desk. Upon Lorenzo’s opening it, the pages change from a lush, cool-toned palette to vibrant sunflower-yellow, providing a background for candy-colored papercut illustrations depicting fantastical stories of cats riding bicycles, tiny teal quail building mysterious machines, and more. The stories reflect Lorenzo’s surroundings with the distorted logic of a dream, leading him to search for and eventually uncover the truth behind them—his discoveries cleverly depicted with bright cut paper laid over the painterly gouache “real world.” Alas, due to unnecessary moralization and a string of uniformly white human characters broken only by a singular, uncomfortably depicted black man, it fails to positively reflect the magic of the world beyond its pages. In the simultaneously publishing original Spanish text, readers will enjoy much more amusing use of onomatopoeia and side commentary from background characters.
Unconvincing text distracts from utterly enchanting illustration. (Graphic novel. 6-10)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59270-293-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that.
Beatrice Zinker is a kinder, gentler Judy Moody.
Beatrice doesn’t want to be fit in a box. Her first word was “WOW,” not “Mom.” She does her best thinking upside down and prefers to dress like a ninja. Like Judy Moody, she has patient parents and a somewhat annoying younger brother. (She also has a perfectly ordinary older sister.) Beatrice spends all summer planning a top-secret spy operation complete with secret codes and a secret language (pig Latin). But on the first day of third grade, her best friend, Lenny (short for Eleanor), shows up in a dress, with a new friend who wants to play veterinarian at recess. Beatrice, essentially a kind if somewhat quirky kid, struggles to see the upside of the situation and ends up with two friends instead of one. Line drawings on almost every spread add to the humor and make the book accessible to readers who might otherwise balk at its 160 pages. Thankfully, the rhymes in the text do not continue past the first chapter. Children will enjoy the frequent puns and Beatrice’s preference for climbing trees and hanging upside down. The story drifts dangerously close to pedantry when Beatrice asks for advice from a grandmotherly neighbor but is saved by likable characters and upside-down cake. Beatrice seems to be white; Lenny’s surname, Santos, suggests that she may be Latina; their school is a diverse one.
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6738-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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