As magical products come, this one is very thin on the bone.
A little girl finds herself caught up in the conflict between fairies and goblins.
Smith’s Imelda lives in a cottage huggermugger to an enchanted forest, complete with fairy queen, sprites, brownie, pixies, sylphs, and so on. One day it’s invaded by the goblin king and his band of gremlin meanies. The fairy queen tries to accommodate the nasty newcomer and his mob, inviting him to the fairy solstice and plying him with sweets, but soon learns he is a greedy, uncouth villain who has no intention of sharing the forest throne with the queen—indeed, he kidnaps her—or anything else the forest has on offer. The fairies turn to Imelda for help, and she concocts a scheme that gives the goblin king a chance to redeem himself before turning him, on the scale of reincarnates, into the lowliest of the lows. The fairies’ insistence on killing the beast with kindness—especially as he’s drawn with such flickering frightfulness—when he would be happy just to throw them in the dungeon makes them come off as a little too angelic for their own good. But the progression of the story is its downfall, with its pat, flat, and predictable characters and failure to provide any twists and turns to keep readers awake.
As magical products come, this one is very thin on the bone. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909263-65-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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