An absolutely drop-dead gorgeous edition of the beloved Andersen tale. Mitchell hews very closely to the language and cadences of the original: What this means is a measured and rich text, excellent for reading aloud if not for very young children. Johnson and Fancher make mixed-media and collage images of powerful beauty. Every page is spectacular—even the narrative pages have spot illustrations (large in this format) and background textures in green (which the text tells us is “good for the eyes”). A rather distracted mother duck notes that one egg looks different from the others, and hatches later. That “duckling” is so ugly that his siblings and all the other farm animals persecute it violently, until it runs away to spend the winter first in a tumbledown cottage and then on its own. When spring finally arrives, he recognizes himself in the magnificent white swans like the one he has become. The artists do wonderful things with texture: Feathers, water and grasses are made of collage bits that range from lace to marbled paper to paint to cloth. The pictures have great depth, not only in terms of perspective but in how they draw the eye and heart to pore over every detail. Simply exquisite. (Picture book/fairy tale. 5-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7636-2159-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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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