Punishment becomes reward in this original tale, set in “old Siam” and loosely related to the historical origins of the modern metaphor. Content to be the mahout for his beloved working elephant Walking Mountain, Run-Run, a “boy with dirty ears,” pays for inadvertently letting his pachyderm splash a passing Prince by being given another elephant—this one white, and therefore sacred, exempt from any work. Feeding two huge animals is struggle enough, but what becomes a real challenge for Run-Run is keeping his new burden idle. Sahib, as he’s named, turns out to be gregarious and so willing to follow Walking Mountain’s lead that soon he’s out pulling tree stumps too, despite Run-Run’s frantic efforts to keep him chained up. The full-page pencil drawings on heavy canvas that McGuire pairs to Fleischman’s Jungle Book–style prose nicely bring out the story’s high spots, and Run-Run’s infectious delight in being with his oversized companions. He even enjoys Sahib, to whom he must bid a sad good-bye after the elephant saves the same arrogant Prince from a tiger. A likely draw for young fans of elephants and exotic climes. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-113136-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Reports of children requesting rewrites of The Reluctant Dragon are rare at best, but this new version may be pleasing to young or adult readers less attuned to the pleasures of literary period pieces. Along with modernizing the language—“Hmf! This Beowulf fellow had a severe anger management problem”—DiTerlizzi dials down the original’s violence. The red-blooded Boy is transformed into a pacifistic bunny named Kenny, St. George is just George the badger, a retired knight who owns a bookstore, and there is no actual spearing (or, for that matter, references to the annoyed knight’s “Oriental language”) in the climactic show-fight with the friendly, crème-brulée-loving dragon Grahame. In look and spirit, the author’s finely detailed drawings of animals in human dress are more in the style of Lynn Munsinger than, for instance, Ernest Shepard or Michael Hague. They do, however, nicely reflect the bright, informal tone of the text. A readable, if denatured, rendition of a faded classic. (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-3977-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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