Robbins (Autumn Leaves, 1998, etc.) chooses a bright palette for his hand-colored photographs, painting the cabs of a series of big rigs in eye-catching shades with trailers and backgrounds in paler tints, but many of the shots are taken from such a distance that the look is artificial, without detail or a sense of scale. The author compounds the sense of distance by showing several truckers but not introducing them; although he describes, in brief, the parts of a tractor-trailer and the kinds of loads it can haul, he skips what’s under the hood or on the dashboard. Compared to books such as Hope Irwin Marston’s Big Rigs (1993), David Jefferis’s Giants of the Road (1991), or even Robbins’s own Trucks Of Every Sort (1981), this comes off more as an exercise in artistic technique, with terse accompanying captions, than a portrait gallery leveled at young truck enthusiasts. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82664-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
cannoli cream off your fingers. (Picture book. 5-8)
Transporting us back to a time when cars had fins, eyeglasses had points, and women wore high heels to go shopping,
Cocca-Leffler (Mr. Tanen’s Ties, 1998) has crafted a perfectly simple and engaging story out of a day spent shopping. The narrator lives on a street that’s on the bus route to the big city of Boston, and all the neighborhood kids get to know Bill the bus driver. One Saturday, Mom and her two daughters take Bill’s bus to Filene’s Basement, where they hunt for bargains and cap the day with ice cream. Another Saturday, Bill takes them to the Italian North End, where they visit the butcher and the baker and vegetable stands, ending with delicious cannoli, which they eat on the bus ride home. The last cannoli always goes to Bill, who calls the trio his "cannoli girls." The acrylic-on-gesso illustrations fill the pages to their edges with cheerful cityscapes, figures, and architecture alike, rendered in bright, affectionate hues. Warm, winning, and as satisfying as licking
cannoli cream off your fingers. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-723-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
Newcomer Santoro’s story of the ice cream truck that pined for a more important role in life suffers from a premise that’s well-worn and still fraying—the person or object that longs to be something “more” in life, only to find out that his or its lot in life is enough, after all. Isaac the ice cream truck envies all the bigger, larger, more important vehicles he encounters (the big wheels are depicted as a rude lot, sullen, surly, and snarling, hardly a group to excite much envy) in a day, most of all the fire trucks and their worthy occupants. When Isaac gets that predictable boost to his self-image—he serves up ice cream to over-heated firefighters after a big blaze—it comes as an unmistakable putdown to the picture-book audience: the children who cherished Isaac—“They would gather around him, laughing and happy”—weren’t reason enough for him to be contented. Santoro equips the tale with a tune of Isaac’s very own, and retro scenes in tropical-hued colored pencil that deftly convey the speed of the trucks with skating, skewed angles. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5296-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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