None of the romance, hard work, lacquer, and love that could be laid out on the keel of the wooden boat being made by hand here is evidenced, and that’s a shame. There’s technical knowledge and intelligence, not to mention a promising premise, as a youngster chronicles the making of this schooner in his diary. But the text breaks one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: it tells instead of shows, more occupied with using the technical words of boat-building than presenting interaction, emotion, or even plumbing the sources of fascination we have with boats. Collins’s (Just Imagine, 2001, etc.) art doesn’t help. Its sketchy painted panels at best hint at what is being done, thereby obfuscating the process, or even the looks of wonder and resolve on the faces of the men building the boat over a period of months as must have shown in her research photographs. Wooden boat–building is a meticulously precise and methodical process that appeals to the proud and measured New England sensibility where it is now kept alive and passed from generation to generation. Perhaps you just have to be there, but maybe one day someone will tell the story. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-889833-35-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Commonwealth Editions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age...
Beverly Cleary has written all kinds of books (the most successful ones about the irrepressible Henry Huggins) but this is her first fantasy.
Actually it's plain clothes fantasy grounded in the everyday—except for the original conceit of a mouse who can talk and ride a motorcycle. A toy motorcycle, which belongs to Keith, a youngster, who comes to the hotel where Ralph lives with his family; Ralph and Keith become friends, Keith gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but finally Ralph loses the motorcycle—it goes out with the dirty linen. Both feel dreadfully; it was their favorite toy; but after Keith gets sick, and Ralph manages to find an aspirin for him in a nearby room, and the motorcycle is returned, it is left with Ralph....
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age group. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1965
ISBN: 0380709244
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
Floca (The Frightful Story of Harry Walfish, 1997, etc.) offers a great explication of the small trucks that airline passengers see scurrying around jets on the runways. In brightly painted illustrations and simple descriptions, he introduces each vehicle, explains what it does, and shows it in action, e.g., the truck called the baggage conveyor is shown hoisting suitcases into the belly of the plane. All five trucks’ duties point to a big finale when the plane takes off. Given preschoolers’ well-documented fascination with heavy machinery, this book will strike a chord with young air travelers, and answer the questions of older travelers as well. (Picture book. 6-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2561-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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