This might not be the most psychologically resonant of Steig's picture books, but who can resist his unlikely transformations, flatly related marvels, and dabs of elementary humor? Here Gorky, a dumpy frog, mixes a magic potion. "Ravished by the scent of roses, he recklessly poured in all there was" of his mother's best perfume. That seems to do it. Later, holding the bottled mixture, his slumbering body rises into the air "like a bubble rising in water." He wakens unafraid and sails through the air, to onlookers' amazement. He floats past two rabbits in a balloon (leaving them "flabbergasted" and "electrified from ears to scuts"), ascends through a storm until he is "suspended in the heavens like a coat on a hanger," and finally lets himself down by sprinkling out the magic liquid in discrete drops. There's no telling how Steig arrived at Gorky's name—or that of his cousin Gogol, who is "goggle-eyed" as Gorky comes rolling by. "He tore after his cousin yelling 'Gorky! Gorky! What's up?'" To which Gorky, of course, replies "I am," and laughs at his cousin's "look of stupid wonder." There are more wonders when Gorky lands, and more puns, with no need for questions and answers. Like Gorky, who seems to float inertly through the clouds, Steig treats the most remarkable events with aplomb, tossing them off as all in a day's dreamwork.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1981
ISBN: 0374427844
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1981
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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