Thin in more ways than one, this debut from a newspaper cartoonist features a long, skinny feline beatnik in beret and shades, frantically searching for his suddenly lost groove. Hepcat’s quest starts out promisingly enough, as he encounters four mop-topped “beetles,” a rumpled Elvis warming his hands at a trashcan fire, and a stride piano-playing frog with a Little Richard pompadour, all of whom offer familiar advice or general comments (“Take a sad song and make it better”)—but then Bramhall’s invention peters out into a succession of generic street and storm noises that Hepcat brushes past at first, before eventually realizing how fundamentally musical they are. Even younger viewers will probably recognize the caricatured Pop icons, but that parade stops almost before it starts, and next to the likes of Mordicai Gerstein’s What Charlie Heard (2002), the theme of music’s ubiquity in the world all around gets a conventional rendition. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-23896-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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