Highly imaginative, hilarious fun.
Best friends living in Kittybunkport, a village inhabited entirely by felines, must summon their courage.
Chowder and Crackles are lobster catchers who depend on the supposedly haunted nearby lighthouse to guide their boats safely home. When the lighthouse goes dark, the two are chosen from among all the other “scaredy-cats” to investigate. They reluctantly set out. The lighthouse appears just as frightening as they expect, and their worst fears come true when they spot a ghost—a lobster ghost! But wait, it’s just another lobster hunter, a dog from Bark Harbor who needs help installing a large light bulb. The tale is just dark enough to give young readers a delighted shiver, but they’ll quickly catch on to the humor of the quirky feline duo and their fantastical adventure. The two cats speak in an obviously well-practiced pattern—the clearly terrified Chowder won’t admit to being afraid (“I wouldn’t say I’m super-scared”), while Crackles is far more candid (“I would. That’s exactly what I would say”). Each strange event is immediately revealed to be benign, and the outcome is assuredly happy. OHora’s signature, highly stylized depictions of the cats with their large heads and huge glowing eyes, set against dark, often eerie backgrounds, work perfectly with this goofy tale. The town names are puns of real Maine towns, and OHora zeroes in on details sure to delight New Englanders, such as the thick sweaters the felines wear.
Highly imaginative, hilarious fun. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622063
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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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