Displaying a positive zest for partial rhymes, broken rhythms and ornate phrasing (“O faster ant! O tire not! / O tire turn / unless you blot / the living, breathing life out of / a hungry ant in danger caught!”), Prince is likely to lose the audience he engaged with the tripping, tickety-tackety verse of I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track (2006). Here he sends the same oblivious ant wandering out into a parking lot, where it again faces annihilation (from a minivan rather than a locomotive), but is saved at the last instant (also as before) by a tasty snack—this one a chocolate doughnut thrown by an observant attendant. Rendered with a slightly unfocused, computer-generated look and fish-eye lens perspectives, the art centers on a miniscule California Raisin–style ant with big brown eyes, human teeth and white gloves capping its top four limbs. He wanders across wide open pavement and, at the end, sits possessively atop a luscious-looking doughnut that is the best thing in this uninspired reprise. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-4027-3823-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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