Children may get a giggle or two but may find the lackluster ending unsatisfying.
Old Big Bad Wolf is tired and wants a more relaxing fairy tale to be in, so he leaves the pigs behind. The results are not good.
The players are familiar if their young audience knows the classic tales: Cinderella, Jack and his beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks. The execution is clunky. The Big Bad Wolf blows off Cinderella’s fairy godmother because “Wolves don’t wear dresses!” and is revolted by the prince’s kiss when he replaces Sleeping Beauty. The Three Bears are entirely pissed off, and they chase the Big Bad Wolf past Rapunzel and over the troll’s bridge. All heck breaks loose then, as a princess kisses a Billy Goat Gruff instead of a frog, and Hansel and Gretel push Prince Charming into the oven. The Wolf gives up, goes back to the Three Little Pigs, the end. Williamson’s art is made in layered swathes of geometric pattern and color. Figures have huge heads and spindly arms and legs. The Big Bad Wolf himself is constructed with arms, legs and tail on an oversized body, his unusual head a long isosceles triangle set in many different pasted-on angles. Visual interest is heightened in tiny details: Baby Bear wears polka-dot headphones, the Big Bad Wolf himself wears a monocle that mostly tumbles out of his pocket.
Children may get a giggle or two but may find the lackluster ending unsatisfying. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58925-111-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pedestrian.
Mr. Brown can’t help with farm chores because his shoes are missing—a common occurrence in his household and likely in many readers’ as well.
Children will be delighted that the titular Mr. Brown is in fact a child. After Mr. Brown looks in his closet and sorts through his other family members’ shoes with no luck, his father and his siblings help him search the farm. Eventually—after colorful pages that enable readers to spot footwear hiding—the family gives up on their hunt, and Mr. Brown asks to be carried around for the chores. He rides on his father’s shoulders as Papa gets his work done, as seen on a double-page spread of vignettes. The resolution is more of a lesson for the adult readers than for children, a saccharine moment where father and son express their joy that the missing shoes gave them the opportunity for togetherness—with advice for other parents to appreciate those fleeting moments themselves. Though the art is bright and cheerful, taking advantage of the setting, it occasionally is misaligned with the text (for example, the text states that Mr. Brown is wearing his favorite green shirt while the illustration is of a shirt with wide stripes of white and teal blue, which could confuse readers at the point where they’re trying to figure out which family member is Mr. Brown). The family is light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Pedestrian. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5460-0389-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: WorthyKids/Ideals
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Teachers looking for a new way to start off the school year will eat this one up.
In Murray’s children’s debut, when a gingerbread man made by schoolchildren gets left behind at recess, he decides he has to find his class: “I’ll run and I’ll run, / As fast as I can. / I can catch them! I’m their / Gingerbread Man!”
And so begins his rollicking rhyming adventure as he runs, limps, slides and skips his way through the school, guided on his way by the friendly teachers he meets. Flattened by a volleyball near the gym, he gets his broken toe fixed by the kindly nurse and then slides down the railing into the art teacher’s lunch. Then it’s off to the principal’s office, where he takes a spin in her chair before she arrives. “The children you mentioned just left you to cool. / They’re hanging these posters of you through the school.” The principal takes him back to the classroom, where the children all welcome him back. The book’s comic-book layout suits the elementary-school tour that this is, while Lowery’s cartoon artwork fits the folktale theme. Created with pencil, screen printing and digital color, the simple illustrations give preschoolers a taste of what school will be like. While the Gingerbread Man is wonderfully expressive, though, the rather cookie-cutter teachers could use a little more life.
Teachers looking for a new way to start off the school year will eat this one up. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25052-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
