This French import is meant to be funny, but beneath its lightheartedness beats a cold heart.
A bear’s life is in shambles until he learns to tell time.
Bear, large and orange, oversleeps on the top bunk. On the bottom bunk, an orange-haired child wakes and stretches. Bear’s human family (all of whom present White) has a morning routine, but Bear’s constantly late. He misses breakfast and the school bus; at school, he misses classes and lunch. Bear “will never learn how to read, count, or write,” warns the text. “The problem…is that Bear cannot tell time.” He’s so hungry from missing meals that he steals pastry and goes to jail. Family love is conditional: “If you do that again, we will not be able to keep you,” threatens Dad. Nitty-gritty clock-reading lessons from Dad in two 10-paneled spreads do succeed—after a terrifying double-page spread of Bear’s clock-dominated nightmares (including visual references to Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Salvador Dalí). Now able to tell time, Bear deserves gifts and fabulous extracurricular activities, the latter ultimately leading to burnout, a vacation in the mountains (or maybe it’s a sanatorium?), and—bafflingly—Bear’s return with a spouse and children of his own (was he not a child in the original family?). There’s a difference between simply not having learned yet to tell time and struggling with a sense of time, but here they blend, hitting neuroatypical readers hard with threats of banishment and conditional rewards. Jolivet’s comics-style illustrations highlight orange, blue, and yellow with black outlines.
This French import is meant to be funny, but beneath its lightheartedness beats a cold heart. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-01135-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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