A tale that means to impress with its ingenuity ends up instead presenting a confusing take on what goes on in utero. The notion that babies spend their time eating, sleeping and kicking in the womb is upended by a plucky unborn infant who is quick to correct these assumptions. When this baby isn’t leaping across a stage, it’s driving a spaceship or winning a baseball game. Mommy’s explanations about the baby’s life are all wrong. The one time Mom is right? Only at the end when she says the baby is ready to be born (but here she’s wrong too, as she says the baby is kicking “A LOT” when instead what she’s feeling are contractions, of course). It’s certainly creative, but eschewing the usual new-baby practicalities makes this book just too fanciful and muddling for anxious about-to-be siblings. Certainly Huliska-Beith’s thick paints catch the eye as she cleverly mimics Mommy’s activities with the baby’s imagined adventures, but even so, this effort is likely to provoke a slew of baffled questions with its skewed view into a fetus’s world. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-4099-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators.
Existing artwork from an artistic giant inspires a fairy-tale reimagination by a master of the horror genre.
In King’s interpretation of a classic Brothers Grimm story, which accompanies set and costume designs that the late Sendak created for a 1997 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, siblings Hansel and Gretel survive abandonment in the woods and an evil witch’s plot to gobble them up before finding their “happily ever after” alongside their father. Prose with the reassuring cadence of an old-timey tale, paired with Sendak’s instantly recognizable artwork, will lull readers before capitalizing on these creators’ knack for injecting darkness into seemingly safe spaces. Gaping faces loom in crevices of rocks and trees, and a gloomy palette of muted greens and ocher amplify the story’s foreboding tone, while King never sugarcoats the peach-skinned children’s peril. Branches with “clutching fingers” hide “the awful enchanted house” of a “child-stealing witch,” all portrayed in an eclectic mix of spot and full-bleed images. Featuring insults that might strike some as harsh (“idiot,” “fool”), the lengthy, dense text may try young readers’ patience, and the often overwhelmingly ominous mood feels more pitched to adults—particularly those familiar with King and Sendak—but an introduction acknowledges grandparents as a likely audience, and nostalgia may prompt leniency over an occasional disconnect between words and art.
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780062644695
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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