The latest in the Urban Babies Wear Black series demonstrates a wry sense of humor, crisp, sophisticated graphics and a thematic approach that leaves its presumed audience of babies in the cold. In addition to wearing bibs, it appears that foodie babies “know their way around a kitchen,” “browse farmers’ markets” and “dine al fresco.” Dion’s illustrations partake of a Helen Oxenbury–style sense of irony (the baby sharing “small plates” is seen from behind, flinging peas at a startled mother), but the complexity of their rendering puts them far beyond the visual comprehension of an actual baby. More for smug foodie parents than real babies—but we already knew that. (2-3)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58246-254-7
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Two one-dimensional detection cases of the sort that seem to be proliferating. These feature the Bloodhound Gang of TV's 3-2-1 Contact. In The Case of the Cackling Ghost, Professor Bloodhound's three young employees—ages 10, 15, and 16—are summoned to a large country house, where an old woman is bothered by nightly visits from a ghost. The ghost, the trio soon discovers, is really clumps of moths attracted by pheromones—an illusion cooked up by the woman's debt-ridden nephew who hopes to frighten her into turning over her precious, but reputedly curse-ridden necklace. In . . . Princess Tomrorow, the gang is called as witnesses for a shady couple who pretend to predict horse-race results—but the corroborating letter received by the agency has actually been mailed after the race. The one they witnessed being mailed before the race has been invalidated by a wet but deliberately glueless postage stamp. They're both clever tricks, but of a sort that usually come five or ten to a volume. There's no attempt to flesh out the puzzles, and not a trace of the Fleischman wit and vigor.
Pub Date: April 1, 1981
ISBN: 0394946731
Page Count: 63
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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These latest adventures of the Bloodhound Gang (from public TV's 3-2-1 Contact) have a little more zip than the dismally perfunctory lust two (p. 800, J-186), but there is still little evidence of the Fleischman wit, inventiveness, and high spirits. And of course the idea of three kids investigating for an insurance company is too far-fetched for any nine-year-old's reality meter. But that's the situation in The Case of the Flying Clock, when Vikki, Ricardo, and Zach check out the theft of a snobbish horologist's flying pendulum clock. "Once belonged to Louis," says pompous Mr. Keefe—Louis XVI, that is. But because they know that steam will fog a mirror and salty water makes objects more buoyant, the Gang deduces that Mr. Keefe did not see a red-haired robber, as he claimed, but instead dumped his plastic-wrapped clock in his wishing-well pending future removal. The Case of the Secret Message brings the Bloodhounds up against a purse snatcher, a smuggler called Mr. Big, his bodyguard Muscles, and a little old lady who seems first a victim, then a cohort, and at last reveals herself as a young policewoman. Perhaps the point of the series is that the TV tie-in will lead habitual viewers to print. In any case, these belong with the merchandise mysteries.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1981
ISBN: 0394847652
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1981
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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