Not the subtlest book, but girls who love fairies won’t care.
Fairy Rosy Bell strikes up a forbidden friendship with a human child.
In August, the Summer People—human vacationers—arrive at their vacation cottages on Sheepskerry Island. They bring loud noises, trample fairy gardens and are dangerous; when humans discover fairies, they chase them off and leave them homeless. Rosy intends to follow the rules and avoid the Summer People, but then she overhears an injured little girl’s parents hoping the island’s magic will cheer up their daughter. Overwhelmed by compassion, Rosy sneaks into Lulu’s room to tidy up, accidentally wakes up Lulu and is spotted. The two strike up a hidden friendship, meeting and passing notes in secret. Lulu is a Peter Pan fan who loves hearing about Rosy’s big sister Tinker Bell, and in return, she shares her grandmother’s stories about visiting the island back when fairies played with Summer Children. But Lulu, not content to be a secret, wants to meet the rest of the Fairy Bell sisters. When a big storm rolls in, Rosy must confess her friendship and enlist the other fairies to help her rescue Lulu, who is on the beach and has lost a crutch. In return, Lulu has the Summer Children help rebuild the fairy homes destroyed by the storm. The story’s sweetness is tempered by the friendship’s secrecy.
Not the subtlest book, but girls who love fairies won’t care. (how to make a fairy house, glossary of baby Squeak’s language) (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-222805-5
Page Count: 115
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary...
Refined, spit-spot–tidy illustrations infuse a spare adaptation of the 1934 classic with proper senses of decorum and wonder.
Novesky leaves out much—the Bird Woman, Adm. Boom, that ethnically problematic world tour, even Mr. and Mrs. Banks—but there’s still plenty going on. Mary Poppins introduces Jane and Michael (their twin younger sibs are mentioned but seem to be left at home throughout) to the Match-Man and the buoyant Mr. Wigg, lets them watch Mrs. Corry and her daughters climb tall ladders to spangle the night sky with gilt stars, and takes them to meet the zoo animals (“Bird and beast, star and stone—we are all one,” says the philosophical bear). At last, when the wind changes, she leaves them with an “Au revoir!” (“Which means, Dear Reader, ‘to meet again.’ ”) Slender and correct, though with dangling forelocks that echo and suggest the sweeping curls of wind that bring her in and carry her away, Mary Poppins takes the role of impresario in Godbout’s theatrically composed scenes, bearing an enigmatic smile throughout but sharing with Jane and Michael (and even the parrot-headed umbrella) an expression of wide-eyed, alert interest as she shepherds them from one marvelous encounter to the next. The Corrys have brown skin; the rest of the cast presents white.
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, which opens in December 2018. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-91677-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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