In this version of a tale by early–20th-century Russian author Vladimir Suteev, Hare, Crow, and Hedgehog squabble so noisily over ownership of a fallen apple that they wake Bear, who suggests that they cut it into equal portions. Hedgehog gratefully gives Bear the fourth quarter as the peacemaker’s share—leaving a disconsolate worm to crawl away muttering that the apple was actually hers. Robbing the argument of rancor by having all of the animals (except Worm) smiling throughout, Arnold places her heavy-lined figures over simple collages constructed from large, irregular pieces of painted paper; the effect is loud, brash, kaleidoscopic. Political subtext aside, this makes an enlightened alternative to such trickster tales as Mirra Ginsburg’s Two Greedy Bears (1976), in which the sly arbitrator gets the lion’s share of the treat. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1629-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Captain Underpants he ain’t.
Although some may initially associate Harper and Shea’s beginning reader with Pilkey’s popular series, it falls short with a thin story and none of the master's clever sense of subversive, ribald humor. The titular hero starts as Veggiebaby, then becomes Veggieboy, then Veggieman, his growth and development attributed to his love of vegetables. He practices his superpowers as he grows, with text and art taking cheap shots at elderly women (as he lifts “a bus filled with chattering grandmas”) and overweight people (as his X-ray vision enables him to see into a house where a rotund man stands, embarrassed and clad only in his underwear: “Some things are better not seen.”) The book ends with Veggieman getting a new name from children who see a stick stuck to his shirt, making the V into a W, and dub him Wedgieman. “We don’t care about spelling,” they assure him when he objects that the word “wedgie” has a “d” and not a double “g.” His new name is sealed when (in an odd turn of events that is, sadly, characteristic of the poorly executed text) he gives himself a wedgie.
In what seems like a veritable golden age of beginning readers, perhaps some things are better not published. Or read. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-93071-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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In this Japanese import, the first in a long-running series to appear in English, two girls ride bikes through a forest—with stops for clover-blossom tea and jam sandwiches.
It’s such a benign wood that Chirri and Chirra—depicted as a prim pair of identical twins with straight bob cuts—think nothing of sharing both a lunch spot and a nap beneath a tree with a bear and a rabbit. Moreover, at convenient spots along the way there is a forest cafe with a fox waiter plus “tables and chairs of all different size” to accommodate the diverse forest clientele, a bakery offering “bread in all different shapes and jam in all different colors,” and, just as the sun goes down, a forest hotel with similarly diverse keys and doors. That night a forest concert draws the girls and the hotel’s animal guests to their balconies to join in: “La-la-la, La-la-la. What a wonderful night in the forest!” Despite heavy doses of cute, the episode is saved from utter sappiness by the inclusive spirit of the forest stops and the delightfully unforced way that the girls offer greetings to a pair of honeybees at a tiny adjacent table in the cafe, show no anxiety at the spider dangling above their napping place, and generally accept their harmonious sylvan world as a safe and friendly place. Doi creates her illustrations with colored pencil, pastel, and crayon, crafting them to look like mid-20th-century lithographs.
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59270-199-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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