Worthy as a gift or a replacement for battered old copies of the originals.
A fresh edition of two classic tales featuring an old farm and its small, red-capped protector.
The two episodes—adapted by Lindgren from old poems and first published in English in the 1960s—are neatly packaged together here with their original folksy illustrations. Both are a bit discomfiting. Never seen by human residents but leaving telltale tracks in the snow, in the first, the Tomten makes nightly rounds of the farm, peeping in on the drowsing animals and also the (white) parents and children asleep in their farmhouse bedrooms. To each he speaks “in tomten language,” offering comforting verses to the animals but ruing the fact that the humans never notice him. In the second, a marauding fox is diverted at the last moment by the Tomten’s timely arrival and offer to share a nightly bowl of porridge so long as the hens are left alone: “ ‘We’ll see,’ says the fox cunningly, ‘but thank you anyway.’ ” Wiberg’s moonlit snowscapes and cozy rustic interior scenes offer aptly atmospheric visuals for the narratives, which have long been favorite read-alouds for their murmurous language and (putatively) comforting portrayal of an invisible, benevolent nighttime guardian.
Worthy as a gift or a replacement for battered old copies of the originals. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78250-461-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Floris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
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