From Agee (Go Hang a Salami! I’m a Lasagna Hog!, 1992, etc.) comes this interpretation of the oxymoron, an expression that seems contradictory. Older children and adults will find mild amusement in this joke-book collection, where the black-and- white cartoons provide the punchline. Among some of the musty notions that might have been at home in the New Yorker’s pages a couple of decades ago are the “permanent temp,” an old woman at a manual typewriter with a date on the wall of January 18, 1932, and the “resident alien,” washing his spaceship out in front of his suburban home. Some of the others venture into the surreal, or at least into Far Side territory; “alone together” shows a man, a woman, a child, and a cat in separate cages, while “home office” contains five desks, each with a plaque respective for Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, and Spot (the dog). (Picture book. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-205159-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999). Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying—and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover. Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm; a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs; and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee. Though she lives halfway around the world and is in reality a decidedly unadventurous urbanite, Alex, short for “Alexandra,” sets off to the rescue, arriving in the midst of another storm that requires Nim and companions to rescue her. Once Jack brings his battered boat limping home, the stage is set for sunny days again. Plenty of comic, freely-sketched line drawings help to keep the tone light, and Nim, with her unusual associates and just-right mix of self-reliance and vulnerability, makes a character young readers won’t soon tire of. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-81123-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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