Review by New York Times Review
A master of haiku, Issa (born in 1763) wasn't blessed with an "easy or happy" life, according to the artist's note at the beginning of this affecting picture book. Karas chose 16 of Issa's plain-spoken poems and arranged them by season. "Once snows have melted, / the village soon overflows / with friendly children" reads the first. "Here / I'm here - / the snow falling" reads one of the last. The pictures, in muted tones, may work too hard to supply a story - images of a hospital and a graveyard tell us the stooped grandfather from the early pages has passed on - but on the whole they complement the haunting simplicity of Issa's art. A debut that brings a much-needed twist to the mystery/fantasy genre with its wisecracking detective hero, who happens to be a living skeleton (well, not technically living, he admits). A regular Sam Spade, Skulduggery can trade punches with vampires, Cleavers and Faceless Ones while keeping up the banter with his human partner, the "darkly talented" Stephanie, whose legacy from a late uncle includes a fortune and otherworldly beings trying to kill her. It's a little hard to buy 12-year-old Stephanie's survival in the face of fangs, oozing tentacles and plain old guns. Still, the author just may have invented a new genre: the screwball fantasy. The dynamic design of this picture book complements the over-the-top creativity of its unnamed protagonist. The "17 things" she is not allowed to do - including stapling her brother's hair to his pillow, writing about a beaver for a class project instead of George Washington and showing "Joey Whipple my underpants" - are rendered in energetic pen-and-ink and digital images: young readers will enjoy noticing that the background to the Joey Whipple spread is a rainbow assortment of pastel panties. In colorful mixed media collage, Lee (who was born in Seoul but now lives in Houston) presents a fanciful visit to a psychedelic zoo where a monkey perches on a smiling hippo and a peacock sports a tail of vivid purple pastel. Unfortunately Mom and Dad are thrown into a panic when their young daughter, in pink cape and boots, wanders after the peacock, imagining herself playing with a bear in a flamingo pool. Clearly it's all in the eye of the beholder. At the end, the girl's "I love the zoo. It's very exciting" is comically set against Mom and Dad looking chalkwhite with fatigue. Lee's view of the parents is almost depressing - when they're not panicking, they look bored literally to death - but the gorgeous menagerie that bursts out at the end restores the child's-eye point of view. A favorite writing exercise here becomes an enjoyable anthology of whimsical poems on every imaginable subject - snowflakes, softboiled eggs, bees, "hat hair." With the exception of Ogden Nash ("Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, / Is those things arms, or is they legs?"), the usual celebrities of American poetry are absent, leaving room for newer pleasures. "Dear shell: / You curve extremely well. / And when I put you to my curving ear / and hear a whispered wind / far off / I cannot tell but it might be the sea," Karla Kuskin writes in "Dear Shell." Keeping in mind her audience, she adds, "Dear shell: / You also smell." JULIE JUST
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Offill's little narrator staples her brother's hair to his pillow, walks backward across the pedestrian crossing, and shows Joey Whipple her underpants when she does handstands in the schoolyard. Clear line-and-watercolor spreads add to the fun as the outrageous little rebel lies and boasts in class and washes her hands in the dog's dinner bowl. When she talks about freezing a dead fly in an ice cube, the picture shows her little brother drinking from a glass that contains an ice cube. She is unfazed by all the scowls she gets for acting up, though she says "I'm sorry" to her mom at the end. In the sweet pink picture of their warm embrace, however, she is plainly looking over her shoulder at the reader as she reaches for that stapler. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The title is terrifically cheeky, and Carpenter (Fannie in the Kitchen) outdoes herself in these mixed-media illustrations. The unnamed heroine, who resembles a cross between Ramona Quimby and Eloise, generates the title list as a result of her free-spirited, rule-breaking notions. "I had an idea to staple my brother's hair to his pillow," accompanies a photo-collage image of a stapler clamping onto a pillow corner, with a pen-and-ink drawing of the brother's sleeping face. Opposite, the boy, bound into his pillowcase, clings to his mother: "I am not allowed to use the stapler anymore." Offill (Last Things, for adults), making her children's book debut, follows with a litany of forbidden behavior encompassing everything from not being allowed to make ice cubes ("I had an idea to freeze a dead fly in the ice cube tray") to not being allowed "to talk (even a little bit) about beavers anymore" (because she "had an idea that [she] might run away to live with the kind and happy beavers"). Carpenter uses a fluid, elegant ink line to convey an impressive repertoire of expressions-she's equally adept at portraying a playground tattletale and a mom at the end of her rope. Kids will be intrigued by the pictures' playful sense of composition as well as the heroine's brazenness, but may be caught off-guard by the abrupt conclusion. Ages 4-8. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-Ingenious artwork-a flawless marriage of digital imagery and pen-and-ink-is indisputably the focus of this winning title. In it, an incorrigible little girl lists all the bright ideas she's ever had and the various ways they've gotten her into trouble. From stapling her brother's hair to his pillow (no more stapler) to gluing his slippers to the floor (no more glue), her outside-the-box thinking attracts plenty of attention, all of it negative. Carpenter brings depth and texture to each spread by adjusting photo-realistic elements to scale and embedding them into the art. The effect is both striking and subtle-"real" wood grain, blades of grass, the chrome-plated details on classroom furniture-all are seamlessly integrated around a winsome cast of well-drawn characters. Some picture books are overconceptualized, overdesigned, and generally overdone, but this one is just about picture-perfect.-Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Freeze a fly in an ice cube? Walk backward to school? Run away from home to go live with beavers? Is there no end to the mischievous things this young girl can think of to do? Apparently not, but the pen-and-ink and computer-generated illustrations incorporating actual objects (stapler, bottle of glue, etc.) add life and humor to the repetitive text. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lass tallies her pranks and ensuing punishments in this Judith Viorst-like plaint. Actually, "punishments" is too strong a word, as stapling her little brother's hair to his pillow, showing her underpants to classmate Jeremy and then later setting his shoe on fire with a magnifying glass seems to draw no retribution beyond commands not to do it again: "I am not allowed to use the glue anymore." Some of her misdemeanors are very funny: "I am not allowed to give the gift of cauliflower anymore." But some actually earn real punishments: a school detention and an escort home by the crossing guard. Finally, when she says the opposite of what she really means--"I'm sorry"--she earns forgiveness. Carpenter uses ink, paint and clipped photos to create energetic scenes featuring a deceptively winning young narrator with short, messy hair and, usually, a confident or smug expression. Some readers may find this young envelope-pusher entertainingly spirited, but there are sure to be those who are going to balk at the notion of pretending to be sorry and having it work. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
