Well-suited for today’s bilingual learning environments, if not a particularly rich read.
Max and Sarah’s simple indoor game of hide-and-seek moves to the wintry outdoors where, with help from Mommy, they build a snowgirl and a snowboy.
Succinct, easy-to-read sentences in English with the corresponding Spanish accompany childlike illustrations in a muted palette. The repetitive text allows for recognition and fluency after several readings. “Sarah, where are you?” / “Sarah, ¿dónde estás?” // “I’m looking for you.” “I’m looking behind the chair.” / “Te estoy buscando.” “Estoy buscando atrás de la silla.” Children fluent in English or Spanish and learning to read and speak the alternate version will effortlessly fall into a pattern and pick up the 42 new vocabulary words (handily displayed on the back cover). Trukhan’s paintings depict Caucasian sibs in a suburban home, planting just enough interior-design detail to situate readers. Useful though the story may be for language-learning purposes, its plotting is flat and arbitrary; the hide-and-seek game occupies a good two-thirds of the book before Max and Sarah go outside to build the snowchildren. (Readers will also note the misleading title.)
Well-suited for today’s bilingual learning environments, if not a particularly rich read. (Easy reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60905-511-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Blue Apple
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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