Ironically enough, this particular Rumor doesn’t seem likely to inspire much repetition.
A group of animal friends misinterprets a small piece of information, resulting in outsized fears and creating a one-joke tale that rolls quickly along to a happy ending.
The confusion begins when a quizzical-looking rabbit named Rupert spots an item about a wolf in the area while reading the paper. He hurries to warn his friends. As the story spreads and grows, each animal adds its own self-inspired spin. Cleo, the cat, describes the wolf’s “sharp claws,” while Antoine, the alligator, focuses on its big teeth and biting ability. Young listeners are sure to get the joke when they realize that Antoine is sharing his fears with his friend Wallace, who just happens to be a wolf. Oddly enough, Wallace doesn’t point out the foolishness of their fears. Instead he panics too and urges all of his friends inside for a bowl of mushroom soup, which they enjoy in the safety of his “double-locked” house. Most of Felix’s anthropomorphized animals wear items of clothing, and all are engaged in typical human activities. These details definitely add appeal (Antoine in the bathtub in an old-fashioned striped bathing costume is particularly amusing, while Rupert’s blue jacket is decidedly reminiscent of another storybook rabbit’s), but they aren’t enough to entirely outweigh the predictable plot and didactic overtones.
Ironically enough, this particular Rumor doesn’t seem likely to inspire much repetition. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56846-219-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Creative Editions/Creative Company
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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