White has adapted material from her series of chapter books (written under the pen name of Nicholas Edwards) about a homeless dog named Santa Paws. The dog has an uncanny ability to rescue people in need, and he finally finds a family who takes him in after he rescues another family from a Christmas Eve fire in their home. Long-winded descriptions of the dog’s sad and lonely life along with his many good deeds form the plot, but the compilation of anecdotes from the series leads to a disjointed structure that doesn’t hang together logically or in the layout of text with illustrations. The succession of multiple rescues all in one Christmas season borders on the ridiculous, and the strung-together plot leaves holes big enough to drive a sleigh through. Logic must be completely suspended when Santa Paws limps into church with burned paws on Christmas morning—into the Catholic church where a rabbi is conducting an ecumenical service for the whole town. Blake’s excellent watercolor illustrations include an appealing cover with the dog popping out of a Christmas package, but his polished paintings can’t pull off a Santa Paws–style rescue. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-32438-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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