Creatively fresh and feminist, with laughs on every single page.
This new series from Dragonbreath’s Vernon puts a wild spin on “Sleeping Beauty.”
A droll opening introduces Harriet Hamsterbone (“who, as her name indicated, was a hamster”), an adventurous princess chafing against deportment, the requirements of her role, and other limitations imposed by her parents. When they reveal the source of their overprotectiveness (the “Sleeping Beauty” curse, with a hamster wheel on her 12th birthday substituting for the spinning wheel), Harriet takes a seemingly counterintuitive stance: since the curse requires her to be alive on her fateful birthday, until then she must be invincible. She gallivants around as an unstoppable hero before returning home for her birthday—to discover that her mother has prepared for the curse by picking a wretched, male-chauvinist prince to kiss and wake her once the curse sets in. Before it can, the evil fairy shows up to gloat, and a hilarious sequence leads to the backfiring of the curse, leaving Harriet the castle’s only hamster still awake. Now she must find a prince willing to kiss every last sleeping creature in the castle. Vernon deploys the same winning elements found in her Dragonbreath books, a mix of boldly drawn, two-tone cartoons, occasional speech bubbles, and a boisterously humorous text. Harriet is her own hamster, but she takes her place proudly alongside both Danny Dragonbreath and Babymouse.
Creatively fresh and feminist, with laughs on every single page. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3983-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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