In a whimsical retelling of “The Brave Little Tailor,” young Jack paints “FEARLESS JACK KILLED TEN AT A WHACK” on his cap after doing for the yellowjackets feasting on his sorghum sandwich, then sets out to make his fortune. That fortune’s not long in coming; cautiously offering to help a town beset by “varmints,” Jack is attacked by, in turn, a “fee-rocious” wild boar, a humongous grizzly bear—and a foul-tempered, horribly bad-breathed, unicorn. Johnson (Bearhide and Crow, 2000, etc.) gives his tale a freely-drawn Appalachian setting, dressing his woolly-haired hero in rumpled country clothing and sending him scrambling from each encounter, sometimes no more than “a frog’s hair” away from disaster. Thanks as much to luck as quick feet, Jack traps the varmints, and hasn’t even pocketed the thousand dollars with which a grateful local sheriff has rewarded him when he hears tell of “that settlement of giants on t’other side of the mountain.” Readers who haven’t met Jack already will be pleased to make his acquaintance; those who are already fans will have new cause to admire his pluck and common sense. (foreword) (Picture book/folktale. 6-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83296-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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A repressive teacher almost ruins second grade for a prodigy in this amusing, if overwritten, tale. Having shown a fascination with great buildings since constructing a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from used diapers at age two, Iggy sinks into boredom after Miss Greer announces, throwing an armload of histories and craft projects into the trash, that architecture will be a taboo subject in her class. Happily, she changes her views when the collapse of a footbridge leaves the picnicking class stranded on an island, whereupon Iggy enlists his mates to build a suspension bridge from string, rulers and fruit roll-ups. Familiar buildings and other structures, made with unusual materials or, on the closing pages, drawn on graph paper, decorate Roberts’s faintly retro cartoon illustrations. They add an audience-broadening element of sophistication—as would Beaty’s decision to cast the text into verse, if it did not result in such lines as “After twelve long days / that passed in a haze / of reading, writing and arithmetic, / Miss Greer took the class / to Blue River Pass / for a hike and an old-fashioned picnic.” Another John Lithgow she is not, nor is Iggy another Remarkable Farkle McBride (2000), but it’s always salutary to see young talent vindicated. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8109-1106-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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