Unusual, but ultimately unimaginative and uninspiring.
Another adaptation of the popular ballet story.
This is something of a free-form storybook app, in that there are few boundaries in its presentation. While most apps follow the traditional left-to-right reading format, this one doesn’t even have clearly defined pages. Rather, it scrolls downward. Apart from the three “chapters,” there are rarely stopping places that don’t include partial text or graphics from another scene. Font and text color vary, which somehow adds structure. The developer was guided by the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, a model that, among other things, encourages children to develop their own theories and frameworks. Interactions are often unconventional, with text and/or graphics sliding across the screen as though they’re on a pulley that’s triggered by scrolling motion. Readers can help Clara put the Nutcracker back together, prompt the clock to strike eight (thought it really only strikes once while the clock arms rotate) and complete such languid tasks as rubbing frost from a window or shaking a basket—none of which have much interactive payoff. The writing, supposedly presented at a fourth-grade level, is functional but wobbly in spots (Arabians are referred to as “Arabics,” for example). The music, of course, is from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, but it’s presented in ultrashort sound bites that end abruptly.
Unusual, but ultimately unimaginative and uninspiring. (iPad storybook app. 6-10)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Timbuktu
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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