Dahl describes all this unredeemed viciousness with a spirited, malevolent glee that plays shamelessly, and no doubt...
The nasty streak that lurks in Dahl's stories for adults and children comes out with a vengeance in his characterization of Mr. and Mrs. Twit and the nasty tricks they play on one another.
Dahl's first sentence—"What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays"—might suggest that the manuscript has been sitting in a drawer for a decade; but if so it hasn't mellowed. Dahl will lose most reading-aloud adults straight off with his description of all the disgusting leftovers more or less permanently lodged in bathless Mr. Twit's beard. Ugly Mrs. Twit with her ugly thoughts is no more attractive. She puts her glass eye in her husband's beer glass and "cackles" (she would cackle) "I told you I was watching you. I've got eyes everywhere." He in turn puts a frog in her bed. She feeds him worms for spaghetti. He, borrowing an old ploy, gradually builds up her walking stick so she'll think she is shrinking. To cure her of the purported "shrinks" he subjects her to a stretching—which, however, backfires for him. Then Dalai turns to the birds, whom Mr. Twit catches for his pies by putting glue on their tree branches. The Twits also keep a family of monkeys they train to perform upside down. At last the birds and monkeys do in the Twits with an ingenious punishment that fits their crimes.
Dahl describes all this unredeemed viciousness with a spirited, malevolent glee that plays shamelessly, and no doubt successfully, to kids' malicious impulses and unmerciful sense of justice.Pub Date: March 1, 1981
ISBN: 014241039X
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1981
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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