A unique, playful offering.
A wingless, friendless mosquito performs a musical in a new town.
Highway brings his one-act play to picture-book format: the text is made up of script, song lyrics (with a bit of musical description but no music), and a few stage directions. Accompanied only by her piano player, Mary Jane Mosquito relates her life story. Its primary theme is that she differs from other mosquitoes because she has no wings. The script and songs portray this as a social disability: winglessness, here, prevents friendships. (It also prevents flying, but that’s unimportant.) She solves her lack of friends by befriending the audience of this performance and teaching them words from “my language.” She calls it “the language of mosquitoes,” but it’s actually Cree; Highway is Cree himself. Todd’s linoleum-cut prints, digitally colored, show Mary Jane onstage and in past scenes (in these flashbacks, other characters appear; besides the wings, they look human, as does Mary Jane). This theatrical star’s dress-up and postures evoke Maurice Sendak’s Really Rosie, from his 1975 animated musical with Carole King. Indigenous-style masks, hung as decoration, double as comedy/tragedy masks. Highway’s enthusiastic song lyrics vary in structure and scansion, providing ample creative opportunity for readers who want to sing them. The conflation of disability and unpopularity—Mary Jane, if she has friends, can fly “in [her] heart”—is regrettable. As a play, this would be a piquant choice for a teenage troupe; as a picture book, it’s best used with early elementary children.
A unique, playful offering. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-92708-338-3
Page Count: 70
Publisher: Fifth House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Extraordinary introductory terror, beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts.
What terrors lurk within your mouth? Jasper Rabbit knows.
“You have stumbled your way into the unknown.” The young bunny introduced in Reynolds and Brown’s Caldecott Honor–winning picture book, Creepy Carrots (2012), takes up Rod Serling’s mantle, and the fit is perfect. Mimicking an episode of The Twilight Zone, the book follows Charlie Marmot, an average kid with a penchant for the strange and unusual. He’s pleased when his tonsils become infected; maybe once they’re out he can take them to school for show and tell! That’s when bizarre things start to happen: Noises in the night. Slimy trails on his bedroom floor. And when Charlie goes in for his surgery, he’s told that the tonsils have disappeared from his throat; clearly something sinister is afoot. Those not yet ready for Goosebumps levels of horror will find this a welcome starter pack. Reynolds has perfected the tension he employed in his Creepy Tales! series, and partner in crime Brown imbues each illustration with both humor and a delicate undercurrent of dark foreshadowing. While the fleshy pink tonsils—the sole spot of color in this black-and-white world—aren’t outrageously gross, there’s something distinctly disgusting about them. And though the book stars cute, furry woodland creatures, the spooky surprise ending is 100% otherworldly—a marvelous moment of twisted logic.
Extraordinary introductory terror, beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts. (Early chapter book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781665961080
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
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