A mild introduction to painting masters’ styles, with elegantly appealing artwork of its own.
Seeking a formal portrait of her rabbit, a Parisian girl meets several artists.
Josette’s upper-class home has portraits of all her family members (all white, and none of whom appear otherwise), but there’s no portrait of Pepette, the stuffed rabbit she carries everywhere. Josette walks to Montmartre, the bustling outdoor square “where the best artists in Paris painted.” Four adult male artists try their hands at painting Pepette. One gives her two noses and three ears; one makes her look droopy; one shows her flying through the sky; and the final one, to Josette’s confusion, sees Pepette as being brightly colored. This is the 1920s, and adults will recognize the painters as Picasso, Dalí, Chagall, and Matisse. Here Fletcher misses an opportunity: while each portrait does feature known traits of its master—in addition to having extra features, Picasso’s cubist Pepette is angular, for instance—the portraits’ styles and colors don’t jump off the page as distinct from the illustrations overall. Confusingly, Matisse’s Pepette isn’t even really pink, as the text claims she is—she’s nearly the same color as her most accurate portraitist shows her to be, when that person reveals herself. Still, the illustrations are lovely, using daubed and layered watercolors with loose lines to create light, airy scenes that invite long savoring.
A mild introduction to painting masters’ styles, with elegantly appealing artwork of its own. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0136-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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