With some quick fixes, this one could become closer to Real and worthy of a young reader's love. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)
This serviceable iPad version of the classic stumbles, primarily over some fixable mistakes.
XiMAD Inc.'s version of the story, one of two takes on it currently available for the iPad, attempts to be as visually lush and inviting as Williams' tear-jerking text. By that measure, it mostly succeeds. For 31 pages (including the title screen) it's a lovely app, soft but precise, with the kinds of spring-loaded on-screen objects, tilt features and smartly integrated text that Alice for the iPad (2010) set the bar for shortly after the device debuted. But the elegance is lost whenever jarring, ugly pop-up ads appear in the free version of the app, covering the controls and interrupting the story. The ads aren't for other children's books or even toys (velveteen or otherwise); they're primarily for PC utilities unlikely to appeal to this tale's audience. Less forgiveable is a glaring problem late in the story: One paragraph of text is repeated from a prior page, and another paragraph is completely missing, pulling the stuffing out of an important story point. Other than those two major problems and, of lesser importance, a lack of options beyond turning the background music off, this adaptation works. At least it works much better than the Ruckus Mobile Media version in the App Store, a dated, unsatisfying rendition that this one easily bests.
With some quick fixes, this one could become closer to Real and worthy of a young reader's love. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)Pub Date: April 18, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: XIMAD
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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