Share this with your favorite atypical kids.
Accepting people for who they are is the gentle message of Bar-el’s latest, which readers may find reminiscent, if not duplicative, of the film How to Train Your Dragon.
Crispin Blaze, scion of a long line of fire-breathing dragons, is on the cusp of his seventh birthday, when he will finally come into his fiery powers. But when asked to light his birthday candles, he breathes whipped cream instead. While his younger sister is pleased, his parents are not—they want him fixed. At the doctor’s, he breathes Band-Aids; at fire-breathing practice, marshmallows (to go with all the flaming logs his friends have lit). Discouraged and unaccepted, Crispin runs away to a cave, where he meets a young knight who understands his plight and tries to help. But spicy foods fail to ignite Crispin’s fire, as do thinking mean thoughts and relaxation techniques. Homesick by nightfall, Crispin is escorted back to his parents by Sir George—at which point, a showdown between their fathers might have had a very unhappy ending but for Crispin’s splendid talent of breathing exactly what is needed. Bowers’ acrylic dragons are delightfully nonscary, and readers will be able to tell their thoughts and feelings with ease; Crispin’s dejected slouch as he runs away from home, toting a heavy suitcase, says it all, as do his befuddled expressions at his nonstandard eruptions.
Share this with your favorite atypical kids. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-01402-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
A wandering effort, happy but pointless.
The perfect book for kids who love dragons and mild tacos.
Rubin’s story starts with an incantatory edge: “Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well.” The playing field is set: dragons, tacos. As a pairing, they are fairly silly, and when the kicker comes in—that dragons hate spicy salsa, which ignites their inner fireworks—the silliness is sillier still. Second nature, after all, is for dragons to blow flames out their noses. So when the kid throws a taco party for the dragons, it seems a weak device that the clearly labeled “totally mild” salsa comes with spicy jalapenos in the fine print, prompting the dragons to burn down the house, resulting in a barn-raising at which more tacos are served. Harmless, but if there is a parable hidden in the dragon-taco tale, it is hidden in the unlit deep, and as a measure of lunacy, bridled or unbridled, it doesn’t make the leap into the outer reaches of imagination. Salmieri’s artwork is fitting, with a crabbed, ethereal line work reminiscent of Peter Sís, but the story does not offer it enough range.
A wandering effort, happy but pointless. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3680-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago.
A fairy tending their garden manages to survive a gaggle of young intruders.
In halting cadences typical of the long-running—and increasingly less amusing—How To Catch… series, the startled mite—never seen face-on in Elkerton’s candy-colored pictures and indeterminate of gender—wonders about the racially diverse interlopers: “Do they know that I can grant wishes? / Or that a new fairy is born when they giggle?” The visual action rather belies the sweetness of the verses, the palette, the bright flowers, and the multicolored resident zebras and unicorns, as after repeated, elaborately designed efforts to trap or even shoot (with a peashooter) the fairy come to naught, the laughing children are escorted out of the garden beneath a rising moon. The encounter ends on a (perhaps unconsciously) ominous note. “Hope they find their way back sometime,” the butterfly-winged narrator concludes. “And just maybe next time they’ll stay!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781728263205
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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