A comic episode with a bit of a bite (implied, not explicit) at the end.
A nearsighted T. Rex stumbles into a chain of calamities after losing his eyeglasses.
Mr. Magoo has nothing on this poor dino: “He went to give himself a wash, / but could not find the basin… // …and so the toilet was the place / that T-Rex washed his face in.” He also dons his sister’s undies and mistakes Grandpa’s slippers for his breakfast kippers. Diverse misadventures later he manages to lose the spectacles for good in his lunch—either eating them (according to the text) or obliviously chucking them away with the bones (in the picture). Ross reinforces the haplessness of his ungainly unfortunate by dressing him in saggy blue trousers, and he has the dino react to each blunder with squinty imperturbability…until, that is, the T. Rex runs to hug what he thinks is his own mom and turns out to be clutching the leg of a much bigger, toothier, more predatory parent. Whoopsie. Well, readers familiar with Willis and Ross’ more naturalistic little fables, such as Tadpole’s Promise (2005), won’t be surprised.
A comic episode with a bit of a bite (implied, not explicit) at the end. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78344-549-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Andersen Press USA
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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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