More a memento than a spinoff that will stand on its own—and readers who have seen the movie will be disappointed at how...
A drastically abbreviated version of the 2010 film, with occasional interactive elements and a pair of mildly entertaining side features.
The app preserves the story arc, in which bad guy Gru uses a stolen Shrink Ray to cop the Moon, loses both to rival evil inventor Vector, adopts three little orphan girls to get them back and ends up a besotted foster dad. It strips out most of the action, dialogue and physical comedy, however. The “Storybook” feature is made up of slow-to-load individual scenes that pan, zoom or show small animations as a reader delivers the terse narrative (voiced narration cannot be turned off). Though the text can be whisked into or out of sight with a tap, and some of the animations are activated by a finger swipe or in one case a shake of the tablet, viewers are otherwise relegated to the role of passive observers. A return to the main menu leads either to a trio of animated invention “blueprints” with lines that can be filled in by rubbing or a portrait gallery with audio selections of cast members’ hyperbolically delivered exclamations and bon mots.
More a memento than a spinoff that will stand on its own—and readers who have seen the movie will be disappointed at how much has been left out. (iPad movie tie-in app. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Trill Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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