PLB 0-06-028522-2 The endpapers offer a clue as to what to expect, showing an alarming array of paint, body parts, clothing, and typeface, which will be used in the workshop of a round-headed man in glasses wearing an acid-green lab coat. There are few words in this wild mishmash, most of them forming variants on the “arm bone’s connected to the . . .” pattern as the hero attempts to assemble a Frankenstein-type monster. The mismatched fonts are as screwy as everything else, scattered about the pages in happy abandon. Eventually a blue-faced, recognizable monster appears, just in time to get a party hat plopped onto his head and to blow out the candle. The monster’s response to the enthusiastic “Happy birthday, Frankie” leaves the professor in pieces; Frankie, in the last spread, is seen wrench in hand, trying to reassemble him—a task that may prove as pointless as the book. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027965-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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Strete pens an ode to tolerance that is none too subtle, but the stunning artwork from Johnson and Fancher should keep viewers involved. The story is a parable couched as a Native American tale, in which a boy (identified by Strete as lost and without a name, although why this is important is never made clear) comes across a rattlesnake and a scorpion, both of whom wonder why the boy doesn’t kill them: “Why should I do that? Snakes belong in this world just like me.” Scorpions, too, the boy chirps. The venomous critters adopt the boy as a brother and when he gets trapped by the Old Foot Eater, a monster who lives in a medicine basket on top of a tree, catching his quarry with a sticky rope, the rattlesnake and scorpion come to his rescue and seal the monster’s doom. Good deeds fly thick and fast here, but without context. The illustrations draw their hues from the American southwest, while the paint is scratched to convey a sense of age and animation, and the monster is a ghoulish, block-headed, spine-chilling delight. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-22922-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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PLB 0-688-15299-6 The Searcys and the Longs (Mountain Wedding, 1996) return in this deep-South, mountain-valley duel of the sexes. Mandy Searcy tells about the arrival of a Model T on the farm. Mr. Long, Mandy’s stepfather, has just purchased the vehicle and is showing it off to the extended family. He calls the boys over for a closer inspection of the wondrous machine. “Cars are for boys,” chirps one boy, looking for trouble. “Girls just ride,” chides another. Mrs. Searcy thinks otherwise. She brushes past the protesting Mr. Long, commandeers the car, and races off with Mandy in the death seat. “We bobbed across a stump at the edge of the yard and ran over a crape of myrtle bush—Mama flattened a pine sapling before tearing through the pasture fence and shimmying over a hill.” It is one lovely rural landscape Mrs. Searcy explores at high speed, depicted in autumn splendor in Rand’s watercolors. This boisterous tip of the hat toward equality of the sexes is as fit and funny as a family story ought to be. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-15298-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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