This lighthearted addition to books about art for children combines art appreciation with a twist. Once a year when the museum is empty, dogs in the paintings have their special night out. They romp around the museum and, just at midnight, jump back into their frames. This year, partygoers had food and fizzy drinks in the gallery and the dogs enjoyed the leftovers. When the revelry was over, four dogs jumped into the wrong pictures. A young girl points out the mistake and everyone is astounded. People line up all year to see the unexplainable. A year passes until the next dog’s night out when, dissatisfied with their new surroundings, the dogs move back to their right places. Hooper’s (The Drop in My Drink, 1998, etc.) text is fast and funny, filled with descriptive phrases matched well by the illustrations. Curless, a London political cartoonist, did the initial drawings, but died before he could complete the illustrations; Burgess finished the work in his style. All the dogs pictured are reproduced from paintings in the collection of the National Gallery in London. A picture index of the featured paintings is a useful addition. Text and illustrations combine to make an amusing read and one that will compliment other more serious works about art for children. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7613-1824-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
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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