Though it often reads with the warm familiarity of a tale by a yarn-spinning grandparent, this overlong picture book by the author of Salmon Moon (not reviewed) fails to connect. During the long, dry summer in Flatbush (yeah, Brooklyn), Mendel decides to take action. He builds a ladder to the clouds in search of the Rainmaker. The Rainmaker is named Maxwell Butterbarrel, who sits in an overstuffed chair, drinks tea, reads the paper, and feels unappreciated. With the encouragement of a little sesame seed candy from Mendel's father (who, with Mendel's mother, climbed up to keep an eye on their only child), Max passes out some sparkler wheels, they all make lightning, and it rains. The art is the real star here; Greenstein's pastel-colored monoprints vibrate with childlike immediacy and primitive vitality. Despite the folklore echoes, the attenuated story ultimately overwhelms the pictures and few will be able to hang in for that inevitable happy ending. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-89726-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Little Lobo and his dog, Bernabé, journey through a Mexican mercado delivering diverse goods to a variety of booths.
With the aid of red words splattered throughout the spreads as labels, Raúl the Third gives an introduction to Spanish vocabulary as Little Lobo, an anthropomorphic wolf, leaves his house, fills his cart with objects from his warehouse, and delivers them to the market’s vendors. The journey also serves as a crash course in Mexican culture, as the images are packed with intertextual details such as food, traditional games, and characters, including Cantinflas, Frida Khalo, and Juan Gabriel. Readers acquainted with Raúl the Third’s characters from his Lowriders series with author Cathy Camper will appreciate cameos from familiar characters. As he makes his rounds, Little Lobo also collects different artifacts that people offer in exchange for his deliveries of shoe polish, clothespins, wood, tissue paper, paintbrushes, and a pair of golden laces. Although Raúl the Third departs from the ball-pen illustrations that he is known for, his depiction of creatures and critters peppering the borderland where his stories are set remains in his trademark style. The softer hues in the illustrations (chosen by colorist Bay) keep the busy compositions friendly, and the halftone patterns filling the illustrations create foregrounds and backgrounds reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein’s pointillism.
A culturally intricate slice of a lupine courier’s life. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-55726-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fizzy yet revealing romp through the toy world.
Though of standard picture-book size, Stein and illustrator Staake’s latest collaboration (Bugs Galore, 2012, etc.) presents a sweeping compendium of diversions for the young. From fairies and gnomes, race cars and jacks, tin cans and socks, to pots ’n’ pans and a cardboard box, Stein combs the toy kingdom for equally thrilling sources of fun. These light, tightly rhymed quatrains focus nicely on the functions characterizing various objects, such as “Floaty, bubbly, / while-you-wash toys” or “Sharing-secrets- / with-tin-cans toys,” rather than flatly stating their names. Such ambiguity at once offers Staake free artistic rein to depict copious items capable of performing those tasks and provides pre-readers ample freedom to draw from the experiences of their own toy chests as they scan Staake’s vibrant spreads brimming with chunky, digitally rendered objects and children at play. The sense of community and sharing suggested by most of the spreads contributes well to Stein’s ultimate theme, which he frames by asking: “But which toy is / the best toy ever? / The one most fun? / Most cool and clever?” Faced with three concluding pages filled with all sorts of indoor and outside toys to choose from, youngsters may be shocked to learn, on turning to the final spread, that the greatest one of all—“a toy SENSATION!”—proves to be “[y]our very own / imagination.”
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children everywhere. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6254-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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