Fans of Brett’s intricately detailed illustration style will find this a sweet treat.
Brett’s Gingerbread Baby skips in for his third story, this time celebrating Christmas in a Swiss Alpine village setting with a band of anthropomorphic gingerbread instruments.
The Gingerbread Baby’s human pal, a white boy named Matti, helps his cookie friend achieve his wish for his own band by baking and decorating a batch of gingerbread musical-instrument ornaments. The cookies all perform in the bandstand at the town Christmas festival in front of a large crowd of dancing townspeople in traditional costumes and friendly animals. A girl in a red coat points out that the instruments are really cookies, setting off an extended chase for tasty snacks, as in traditional versions of “The Gingerbread Man.” Matti turns the ornaments into little snowmen to hide them from the townspeople, and the Gingerbread Baby himself escapes and hides in the branches of the village Christmas tree, decorated with dozens of ornaments and sweets. The Christmas tree is a large pop-up feature within the last spread, constructed of laminated paper that should hold up to multiple Christmas seasons. Brett again uses her signature style of ornamental borders and side panels to extend the story, with borders of frosting and candies and panels including dancing children of different ethnic groups.
Fans of Brett’s intricately detailed illustration style will find this a sweet treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17071-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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