Hair today, gone tomorrow.
Nearly buried beneath fantastically abundant billows of red hair, a small, yawning princess is pulled from bed.
She submits with relative meekness (“No, I’m sorry Elizabeth, / No mouse in your skirt!”) to having her stockings tied on, her teeth rubbed with soot, sleeves and ruff attached to a gown over her wide petticoat, and finally her hair wrestled into shape—all just in time to be presented with a regal bow to an all-white crowd of likewise bowing retainers. Mouse aside, the whole procedure has a stilted formality that is only intensified by the elegantly restrained details of Tudor-style dress and interiors visible in the illustrations. Though its rhyming and scansion could use work, Bridges’ verse captures a chivvying tone that seems appropriate considering how the princess is being respectfully but briskly hustled along by her seldom-seen lady’s maid. But the scene-stealing hair seems to have all the character here, as the stiff, silent child’s face is either hidden or largely expressionless. In lieu of source notes the author offers a few scattered observations about Elizabethan fashion and behavior at the end, and Marley’s interiors are evidently likewise generic rather than based on those of Hatfield House, where Elizabeth I grew up. Readers might take up the implied invitation to compare their own morning toilettes or perhaps imagine enjoying the royal routine themselves. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.5-by-19-inch double-page spreads viewed at 79% of actual size.)
Hair today, gone tomorrow. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-944903-94-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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