On one of the hottest weeks of the summer in Caliente, Texas, best friends Elena and Alma open competing snow-cone stands across the street from each other. As business booms and wanes, the competition gets stronger, as do the sales pitches and incentives. Extravagant decorations, puppet shows and folk dancing in traditional costume cause ever more customers to crisscross the street, until both ice machines simultaneously malfunction, pouring out colored ice shavings until a slushy rainbow ribbon of the stuff tumbles down the street, encouraging everyone to “[cascade] down the dazzling icy mound” and leaving Elena and Alma to dissolve their rivalry and renew their friendship. The full-color paintings are mostly realistic, featuring appealing, if stiff, protagonists; the rainbow-colored snow-cone slide makes for a startling and unconvincing intrusion. Lacking the charm of Strega Nona and her magical spaghetti pot, this summery, bilingual story jars with the quick flight of fancy. While the themes of friendly rivalry and work-made-fun are worthwhile, the odd deus ex machina mystifies more than it delights. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-575-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina...
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up.
Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields.
Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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