Silverman adapts a story from Sholom Aleichem featuring Kapores, the old Eastern European Jewish ceremonial custom of twirling a chicken in order to erase one’s bad deeds on the last day of Rosh Hashanah. In a poor village, a young boy overhears the chickens plan a strike in rebellion to the Kapores custom, while they chant “No more Kapores!” and walk out of the village. The boy, fearing that without chickens, his bad deeds will remain for the New Year, unsuccessfully tries to warn his papa. When the empty chicken coops are discovered, everyone anticipates catastrophic results. The boy leads the villagers to the meadow where the chickens have congregated and there begins a series of fruitless orders and negotiations to bring the fowl back to the village. The chickens keep to their squawking convictions, convince the boy that good behavior is dependent on inner strength, and strut off to parts unknown, thus ending an old custom without dire consequences. Newcomer Trueman’s wonderful mixed-media paintings of ink, pencil, and gouache humorously capture the Eastern European setting and the melodramatic reactions of the villagers. Satirical and absurdly appropriate for this ludicrous and outdated rite. (Folklore. 5-9)
Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-525-46862-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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