Hopelessly tangled.
Karst and Lew-Vriethoff follow up their picture book about The Invisible String (2018) that connects loved ones over distances and even after death with an extension of the metaphor.
The “hundreds of Strings” that connect each individual “to everyone we know” also “create a nest that covers the planet, / interlacing us together, cradling us forever.” This is the titular Web, depicted in Lew-Vriethoff’s bright cartoons as sweeping colored lines that circle the globe every which way like an ambitious international airline’s route map. It includes humans, animals, plants, and even weather systems: “Everything is linked!” But the Web is only as strong as the people who remember and care for it, and a double-page spread that shows a frightened, pale-skinned family fleeing a burning city on verso for a refugee tent city in a flowered meadow on recto, where a multiracial peace demonstration is also taking place, depicts both the consequences of forgetting and the healing powers of remembering the Web. In going global with her String, Karst has a very difficult time maintaining her metaphor. The notion of a concrete, tangible bond of love is a child-friendly way to imagine relationships, but making those crisscrossing bonds into a Web of mutual responsibility strains the concept. Will writing one’s cousin truly prevent world war? By the end, Karst has gone overboard: “The Invisible Web is alive! / Its time is right now. / It breathes as we breathe, / pulsating all over our Earth, / the single heartbeat / of life and love.”
Hopelessly tangled. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-52496-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
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