Review by Booklist Review
PreS-Gr. 2. The team behind The Adventures of a Nose0 (2006) offers a less surreal picture book, this one featuring goofy sea creatures that would be right at home in a Spongebob Squarepants 0 cartoon, as well as a message about calming irrational anxieties. Big, strong Shark has a phobia of tigers, and his worries spread to his buddy, Lobster, and to other crustacean neighbors (whose jointed bodies are less appealingly anthropomorphized than that of expressive Shark). Everyone pitches in to build a fortress, beefing up security by retrieving a "huge big monster from the deep sea." Having mustered the courage to face the flesh-and-blood monster, Shark and Lobster realize the absurdity of their earlier fears. Hand-inked, digitally colored panels spin out the story at just the right pace, and the book's thick matte pages open vertically, yielding tall spreads that reinforce the impression of descending through watery depths. The unfamiliar bottom-to-top page turns may tempt some adults to pass over this for group sharing, but the positive reactions from kids should justify giving it a try. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Irrational fear propels the silly undersea antics of best pals Lobster and Shark in this paper-over-board offbeat volume-an intriguing stylistic cross between picture-book and graphic-novel. Shark confides to Lobster one day that he's scared-of tigers. "I've heard of them! They walk on their teeth, they glow in the dark, and they eat you up!" confirms Lobster. In their zeal to protect themselves from the stripey menace, the friends construct a fortress, an act that attracts attention and help from a cuttlefish and a cadre of spiky crabs, who supply 700 rocks and a piano. The crew decides that a monster is the only sure-fire security solution and they fetch a huge, ugly sleeping one from deep below. When said monster awakes, tiger phobia suddenly becomes low on the list of worries, as evidenced by the sea creatures scattering willy-nilly, and the remnants of the black-and-white piano keys. Creating a fun sense of deep-water exploration, husband-and-wife team Schwarz and Stewart (The Adventures of a Nose) serve up a clever, vertically oriented format here. The hand-lettered speech bubbles and comics-like panels that alternate with full-page and full-spread illustrations, flooded with Stewart's ink-lined and digitally colored zany characters add to the appealing visual zing. Kids will savor knowing more than the undersea heroes, and appreciate the tale's triumphant message. Ages 3-6. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An undersea tale with a distinct Aesopian flavor, bound at the top so that it opens vertically. Having heard that tigers are "full of teeth and stripes," a frightened shark enlists Lobster and other marine denizens to construct a fortress--but then, still apprehensive, pulls a sleeping monster up from the deep for further protection. Bad move, as Shark learns when the benthic behemoth awakes. The illustrations' tall, narrow shape enhances that deep-sea feeling, and the cartoon creatures that float past (spouting comments in dialogue balloons) add a surreal air--particularly the monster, which sports long eyelashes, oddly placed fins and a chorus line of female human legs on a rubbery, sickly green body. A merry chase later, Shark realizes that sharks are also toothy, and that Lobster is striped, so there's really nothing to fear from tigers. There's a moral there, somewhere. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
