A lively #ownvoices romp into the power of intention—and the hilarity of trial and error.
In this playful retelling of an Inuit origin story, a feisty elder creates two of the Arctic’s most celebrated animals.
Guk, an Inuit woman with graying braids and light brown skin, has the power to “breath[e] life into the world.” With imagination and exuberance, Guk creates the walrus and the caribou. Young readers may notice that Guk’s creations aren’t quite as they should be: The walrus sports “huge antlers” while the caribou’s snout contains fearsome tusks. Aside from their comical appearances (rendered whimsically in Cutler’s cartoony illustrations), the walrus’ and caribou’s mismatched features also wreak havoc on the human world. The walrus’ antlers accidentally “overturn the kayaks in the water”; meanwhile, “every time it saw a hunter, the caribou would charge him with its tusks.” Guk addresses these issues by gleefully swapping the appendages to better suit the animals. In a final act of reckoning, Guk punishes the caribou for its cantankerous attacks against the hunters, via a swift kick—thereby giving the caribou its distinctively flat forehead and skittishness of humans. Inuit author Harper’s high-spirited version of this Indigenous oral tale will make a delightful addition to both libraries and personal collections. Backmatter includes a short Inuktitut glossary with a link to more Inuktitut language resources.
A lively #ownvoices romp into the power of intention—and the hilarity of trial and error. (author’s introduction, glossary) (Picture book. 5-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77227-256-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Inhabit Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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