Adult explication may be needed for the textual rubric; the visually told story is enthralling all on its own.
Uplifting in more ways than one, this prizewinning import suggests that little things can change lives—and perhaps even the world.
Placing small, uncomplicated shapes against large fields of uniform color to create an aptly simple look, Albertine provides a visual plot for Zullo’s meditative abstractions. Some days “have something a little more,” which is “not made to be noticed” but “there to be discovered.” A man pulls up to a cliff in a truck and opens the back to release a flight of birds. Spotting one small, shy bird remaining, he companionably sits with it, then persuades it to take wing by flapping his arms and falling comically to the ground. Later, though, it returns—leading all the other birds—to carry the man up into the sky so that he can take flight on his own. Drawn with delicate precision, the characters express fear, friendship, yearning and delight through glances, posture and other cues that are not too subtle for observant children to pick up. More than half of the spreads are wordless, and for younger audiences at least, the rest could just as well be too.
Adult explication may be needed for the textual rubric; the visually told story is enthralling all on its own. (Picture book. 6-8, adult)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59270-118-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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IN THE NEWS
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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