Review by New York Times Review
With refreshing realism, this colorful picture book takes a child's-eye view of going to preschool for the first time: the frame is filled with new teachers and classmates, the teachers looking especially upbeat. The speaker endures a few bumps (another boy "got mad and knocked all my blocks down"), but he's confident and matter-of-fact: "I don't know why Melissa cries every time she says goodbye to her mother. I don't. I love to come to preschool." The art, in handprinted monoprint, is bold, striking and handsome, while being suggestive of a child's carefree style. WALKING TO SCHOOL By Eve Bunting. Illustrated by Michael Dooling. Clarion. $16. (Ages 4 to 8) This is a different kind of school story, about a girl facing her second day of school in Northern Ireland: "But maybe the Protestants won't be there today, lying in wait for us." Dooling's oil paintings give amazing individuality to dozens of faces-Allison's Catholic family, angry adults, two girls who bridge the divide. The choice of story is puzzling in some ways, though: it's set before the peace accords, raising the question of what the situation might be now. DREAM GIRL By Lauren Mechling. Delacorte. $15.99. (Ages 12 and up) Claire Voyante, high school sophomore, has a curious talent for seeing into the future but no control over it. She can see a person or object that will turn out to be significant; the question is what to do about what she sees. A gift from her theatrical grandmother, a cameo pendant, is a "good luck charm" that turns out to be anything but. "When I wore that necklace ... all my dreams started to come true," her grandmother tells her. In Claire's case that means confused and ominous hints from the future that hardly make adjusting to a new school any easier. THE PET DRAGON Written and illustrated by Cristoph Niemann. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.89. (Ages 4 to 8) A trip to China inspired this playful homage to the Chinese language: talcing off from ideograms for "person" and "small," Niemann imagines an adventure for a girl and her dragon, doing the utmost with the swoops and tilted uprights of some of the thousands of characters an educated Chinese reader commonly knows. Even this brief introduction to a vastly different language (watch "tree" become "woods" become "forest") is an eye-opener. BATS AT THE UBRARY Written and illustrated by Brian lies. Houghton Mifflin. $16. (Ages 4 to 8) Lies follows up his "Bats at the Beach" with another tale of bat mischief - "We've feasted, fluttered, swooped and soared, and yet... we're still a little bored." A window left open to the night air at the local library provides just the distraction: not only the water fountain for splashing in, but the shelves lined with tomes. A lively book discussion group even meets under a reading lamp (one bat wears a pincenez). The rhyme scheme is not the smoothest ("Please keep it down -you must behave! This library is not your cave!"), but it doesn't matter; the charm is all in the story itself. CYCLER By Lauren McLaughlin. Random House. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) The striking jacket of this oddball first novel says it all: the girl on the front cover becomes an almost identical-looking boy on the back. Only her parents know that four days a month, Jill turns into a boy (who's named himself "Jack," naturally). Her classmates think she's off getting a transfusion for a rare disease, while really she's got a lot of maintenance work to do - all that shaving, for one thing. The narrative toggles back and forth between Jill's and Jack's points of view, comically detailing the problems you can get into when you're half boy and half girl, including what happens when the boy falls for the girl's best friend. JULIE JUST
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
An open library window is an invitation for a colony of bats in this sequel to Bats at the Beach (2006). Once inside, older bats look for favorite books, while younger ones explore and play. Storytime settles everyone down and transports them into the tales, filled with bat characters playing new roles. The bat homage to classic children's books includes titles like Goodnight Sun, while images such as Little Red Riding Bat will amuse children who are familiar with the originals. The rhymed narrative serves primarily as the vehicle for the appealing acrylic illustrations that teem with bats so charming they will even win over chiroptophobes.--Perkins, Linda Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. Lies's (Bats at the Beach) much-lauded bats are back and the library's got them--thanks to a window left open by an unsuspecting (or perhaps sympathetic) librarian. Although the young ones initially misbehave (they make photocopies of their bodies and turn the water fountain into a splash pool), Lies cuts them a little slack: It's hard to settle down and read/ when life flits by at dizzy speed. Story time settles everyone (upside-)down, and soon the furry creatures are completely swallowed up in books, giving Lies comic license to bat-tify the signature visuals from classics like Make Way For Ducklings; Pippi Longstocking; Goodnight, Moon and Peter Rabbit. As with its predecessor, this book's richly detailed chiaroscuro paintings find considerable humor at the intersection where bat and human behavior meet. But the author/artist outdoes himself: the library-after-dark setting works a magic all its own, taking Lies and his audience to a an intensely personal place. Ages 4-8. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr-3-"Word spread quickly from afar.a window had been left ajar. Can it be true? Can it be? Yes, bat night at the library." The bat families first introduced in Brian Lies's Bats at the Beach (2006; Nutmeg Media, 2008) are back for a literary adventure in this iconographic rendering of the book (2008, both Houghton Mifflin). Once again, the youngsters are ready to play; viewers will delight at the imaginative mischief to be had at the library-puppet shadows on the wall with the overhead projector, swimming in the water fountain, posing in a gingerbread house pop-up book, and duplicating themselves with the copy machine. Finally tired out, the little ones join their elders for a magical story time, sitting in chairs, or hanging upside down from the tabletops. Children will be tickled to see scenes from some of their favorite books such as Make Way for Ducklings, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, Pippi Longstocking, and others-all inhabited by bats. Background strings and high-pitched bat squeaks enhance the whimsical acrylics painted in warm, rich colors. In a conversation with the author, Lies shares his inspiration for the story. The setting is based on the library in the small town where his father grew up-a stone building with stained glass windows where, indeed, there was once a visiting bat. As Lies speaks, close-up stills allow viewers to notice the artwork's clever details that they may have missed the first time around. The author also confides that another bat family outing is in the works-Bats at the Ball Game. Use this charming, clever offering for library orientations and bat units.-Barbara Auerbach, P.S. 217, Brooklyn, NY (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 Kirkus Book Review
In this latest from Lies, it's all--deservingly--about the artwork. He brings a sure, expressive and transporting hand to this story of a colony of bats paying a nighttime visit to a small-town library. There is enough merriness here to keep the story bubbling, and young readers will certainly identify with some of the bats that have gotten a bit bored by the visit, as bats will do, and started monkeying around with the photocopier. There is a lovely image of a group of bats hanging around the rim of a reading lamp listening to a story; the peach-colored light illuminates the immediate vicinity while the rest of the library is shadowed and mysterious. The rhymed text, on the other hand, feels unmulled, leaving the artwork to do the heavy lifting. Pictures light-handedly capture the Cheshire Bat, Winnie the Bat and Little Red Riding Bat, only to be trumped by some ill-considered sermonizing--"But little bats will have to learn / the reason that we must return." Buy it for the pictures. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
