Though engaging, this app calls more attention to the medium than the message behind this wonderfully disturbing tale.
Multimedia collage tells the tale of a child prodigy’s struggle with madness in this app version of the novel for teens.
On paper, Anthony and Corral pushed narrative’s edge in this unsettling tale of star-crossed love and burgeoning talent. The app does as well. Using snapshots, newspaper clippings, postcards, concert programs, text-messaging conversations and illustrations, Anthony and Corral present a scrapbook-style biography of Gloria “Glory” Fleming’s extraordinary life from before birth to her disappearance at age 17. Glory’s prodigal talent as a pianist gains her world renown, and her love for Frank Mendoza, the boy next door, appears to be able to surmount all obstacles. But when Glory starts introducing the basic Chopsticks theme in performance and then finds she can’t stop, the shadow of madness casts a pall over the story, leading readers to wonder whether Frank even exists. This app’s interactive features underscore Glory’s instability. With the ability to zoom in, for example, readers can play detective and scrutinize key objects in the story, such as a wine bottle's label, that contradict her account. The ability to move photos on the page suggests their transience, and touch-screen English translations of Spanish passages make the spare text even more accessible. It's a pity that the app does not make fuller use of an audio recording of Chopsticks; instead, it relies on Internet access to view embedded links to YouTube clips (which don’t add appreciably to the work), making it less portable than the print version.
Though engaging, this app calls more attention to the medium than the message behind this wonderfully disturbing tale. (iPad book app. 15 & up)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
In a snowbound Swiss village, Matti figures it’s a good day to make a gingerbread man. He and his mother mix a batch of gingerbread and tuck it in the oven, but Matti is too impatient to wait ten minutes without peeking. When he opens the door, out pops a gingerbread baby, taunting the familiar refrain, “Catch me if you can.” The brash imp races all over the village, teasing animals and tweaking the noses of the citizenry, until there is a fair crowd on his heels intent on giving him a drubbing. Always he remains just out of reach as he races over the winterscape, beautifully rendered with elegant countryside and architectural details by Brett. All the while, Matti is busy back home, building a gingerbread house to entice the nervy cookie to safe harbor. It works, too, and Matti is able to spirit the gingerbread baby away from the mob. The mischief-maker may be a brat, but the gingerbread cookie is also the agent of good cheer, and Brett allows that spirit to run free on these pages. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23444-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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