Mabel has moxie, but she deserves a better story. As Mabel herself might say, “Send for the script doctor, darlings.”...
A pampered French bulldog experiences a sudden decline in her eyesight, affecting her mobility and perceptions of potential threats.
Little Mabel established her opulent lifestyle and divalike demeanor in her previous self-narrated story, Naughty Mabel (2015). In this sequel, Mabel’s eyesight mysteriously goes haywire, and she runs into walls, mistakes a bowl of potpourri for her dogfood dish, and begins to experience double vision. The meandering, overlong text describes how Mabel’s eye problems worsen at night, when she perceives large shapes as monsters about to attack her. On a sleepover with friends, she smashes dinosaur skeletons and, back in her own home, beats a gigantic armchair with her pink baseball bat, leading to a trip to the eye doctor for an exam. (Another dog owner there is a black woman; Mabel’s owners and her next-door neighbor are white.) Mabel tries on different kinds of “very attractive” glasses, but her owners choose contact lenses as “more practical for an active girl.” Mabel’s sassy attitude and over-the-top antics have a slapstick appeal, but several of the jokes in her witty dialogue are way over the heads of young readers, who likely won’t be familiar with potpourri, couscous, Martha Stewart, or black-and-white movies starring Bette Davis. The final gag depends on readers having a fairly sophisticated, well-developed sense of irony—debatable for the younger end of the audience range. Clever, cartoon-style illustrations and a supersized format provide visual heft for Mabel’s narrative but can’t compensate for the weaknesses of the text.
Mabel has moxie, but she deserves a better story. As Mabel herself might say, “Send for the script doctor, darlings.” (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3024-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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