A toy bear plays conflict resolution specialist in this post-modern episode from the illustrator of Eric Sanvoisin’s The Ink Drinker (1998). Chasing a duck that has filched a cucumber slice from her picnic basket, Celeste bumps into a blimp-like policeman, Officer Wallace B. Brekkit; while she stands silent and blushing, her jointed ursine companion Tim uses aggression and persuasion to convince the duck that it’s better to be friends. The next day, Celeste and Tim meet the duck on a grassy knoll for chocolate and sausage sandwiches. Matje integrates a present-tense text, printed in various sizes and colors, with cartoons featuring pop-eyed figures with large heads and tiny limbs. Children will respond to this with amusement, and the theme is a worthy one. (Picture book. 7-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82100-X
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
Did you like this book?
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From Johnston (An Old Shell, 1999, etc.), poetic phrases that follow a ghostly barn owl through days and nights, suns and moons. Barn owls have been nesting and roosting, hunting and hatching in the barn and its surroundings for as long as the barn has housed spiders, as long as the wheat fields have housed mice, “a hundred years at least.” The repetition of alliterative words and the hushed hues of the watercolors evoke the soundless, timeless realm of the night owl through a series of spectral scenes. Short, staccato strings of verbs describe the age-old actions and cycles of barn owls, who forever “grow up/and sleep/and wake/and blink/and hunt for mice.” Honey-colored, diffused light glows in contrast to the star-filled night scenes of barn owls blinking awake. A glimpse into the hidden campestral world of the elusive barn owl. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-981-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
