Elegantly droll and extravagantly French, from the fittingly unpossessive title to the "shiny cuirass" M. Racine dons defensively with his cavalry uniform. Because "One morning, alas! three times, alas! he found all his pears gone" — they were his pride and his joy, not for selling or sharing; now he's lying, soon sleeping, in wait for the thief. . . upon whose arrival "Our avenger jumped to his feet and grabbed his saber. 'Sapristi!'" And voila the beast — with "long, socklike ears. . . on both sides of an apparently eyeless head," and a "shaggy, mangled mane" topping what Ungerer (forked tongue in cheek) calls a "drooping snout" but distends mistakably like an unconfigurated phallus. Honi soit. . . and all that (see particularly said proboscis as emblematized fourfold on the back cover), but the quite corrigible homme de guerre — dressed to kill yet extending a nice macaroon on the tip of his blade in a tentative gesture of friendship — is the very picture of a straight-man: "'More delicacies of this sort and it could be tamed,'" he reflects, and the ensuing picnic is the start of something magnifique continually outdoing itself. "'I lost my pears but found a companion,'" muses the bespectacled old man sporting a red fez and puffing on a hookah; he's relaxing before the gramophone while his most curious of pets ("It was especially fond of cookies, chocolate, and ice cream") sits soulfully sipping through a straw. After communing on sliding pond, cycle, and swing, they end up at the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and what happens there shall not here be disclosed since it crowns the glory of the rest. . . (the French would dub it formidable). What meets the eye is at once exuberant and economical; both pictures and text are more and less sophisticated than they seem. This is funny and bright and immediate on lots of levels, a sort of rare tour de farce for the whole family.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1971
ISBN: 0374405700
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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