Strains to fit what feels like a forcibly imposed theme but should nevertheless find fans.
Lighthearted verses, many presented in graphic format, feature siblings, monsters, wild creatures, flights of fancy, and daring deeds.
In breezy, loose-jointed rhymes, Taylor moves freely between quotidian and fantasy settings. A sibling’s indignant rejection of a suggestion that little brother Max is “really slow” (“Others see what Max can’t do / but I see what he can”), for instance, is followed by a ballad of a lad so indecisive that he spends 100 years in front of a vending machine and a teacher’s gleeful revelation that she has hairy “monster feet.” The titular theme, which extends to specific labels for many of the poems and a “Feeling Index” at the end, not only includes non-emotions such as “Peer Pressure,” but also arbitrarily assigns just one feeling even to entries that contain several…and sometimes getting it wrong to boot. Still, in a mix of lavishly detailed sequential panels and enveloping single-page illustrations, Dorman catches all sorts of fantastical creatures, joining a large, racially diverse cast of children (including one young wheelchair user) in brisk action. Readers will find them all stimulating company—even a “humdrum” dragon bored with blasting castles who decides to take up a more peaceable hobby (knitting) and the Laziest Lady Ever: “But some people may argue my talent’s a bore / since I’ve laid here so long my face stuck to the floor.”
Strains to fit what feels like a forcibly imposed theme but should nevertheless find fans. (Poetry. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781639933075
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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