This sympathetic portrayal of a boy struggling with school has an audience.
Third grader Trevor Lee makes every effort to avoid revealing that he still can’t read.
Educator Blevins directly addresses the shame of reading difficulties in this middle-grade novel. Trevor Lee is “as good at reading as a fish is good at climbing a cactus,” but his teacher, Miss Burger, wants every child to read aloud at the upcoming Parents’ Night. To help readers understand the challenge Trevor Lee faces, the author includes the story they’ll perform: “The Little Red Hen and Her Lazy-Butt Friends.” The humor of the narrative extends beyond the many references to body parts: Trevor Lee’s fear of reading in public is matched by his fear of the wrath of his farming family’s rooster. Both lead him to ridiculous actions. Further, his best friend, Pinky, is always at hand to add more trouble—as when they fail to follow field-trip rules and end up stuck in a tree. Happily, some extra instruction from the teacher and the support of his parents and nonreading Mamaw help him rise to the big occasion. Each short chapter is illustrated with grayscale drawings, often a head shot of the freckle-faced white boy, and ends with a comment in Trevor Lee’s own words: “Some days lay a big rotten egg.” His folksy language reflects his rural Tennessee origins, but his repeated expressions of distaste for girls limit the book’s appeal. Pinky is depicted as a child of color, Miss Burger presents white, and his classmates are diverse.
This sympathetic portrayal of a boy struggling with school has an audience. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947159-06-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: One Elm Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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