Irrepressibly zany fun.
From the front jacket copy ("...56 action-packed pages, 75% more than those old 32-page 'Brand-X' books") to the Little Red Hen's back-cover diatribe ("Who is this ISBN guy?"), the parodic humor here runs riot.
The insistent Hen is already squawking her tale at Jack—officious narrator, MC, and sometime participant—before a page labeled "Title Page" in 192 point type; the dedication is upside down, Jack's introduction carries a Surgeon General's warning, and the table of contents turns up late—after a story in which it plays an unprecedented role, then gets a jolt that knocks one tale off the page and, apparently, right out of the book. The brief, colloquially told, thoroughly revised tales are in the same comic spirit: no one wants to eat the Stinky Cheese Man, unlike the Gingerbread Boy; a lovestruck prince puts a bowling ball under his princess's 100 mattresses; "and much, much more!" All of this is fairly amusing, but what's most unusual is the innovative play with typography (a repetitive story gets smaller and smaller like an eye test, and words and letters are distorted in various other ways) and Smith's wondrously bizarre and expressive art ("The illustrations are rendered in oil and vinegar," states the colophon).
Irrepressibly zany fun. (Fiction/Picture book. 5+)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84487-X
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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