Review by New York Times Review
Is it a bird? No! Is it a plane? Sort of. It's Elecopter, a blue elephant with propellers and landing gear who flies over the African savanna returning baby birds to their nests, administering haircuts to lions and rescuing animals from wildfires. Slack ("Monkey Truck") sees great comic possibilities in his flying pachyderm's unusual abilities. Fierce in the face of danger and always kind, this motherly elephant gives Elecopter parenting a good name. A MAMMOTH IN THE FRIDGE By Michaël Escoffier. Illustrated by Matthieu Maudet. 36 pp. Gecko Press. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 3 and up) "Dad! Dad! There's a mammoth in the fridge," the big brother shouts. His father looks cross; his sister seems worried. After the fire department chases the poor mammoth up a tree, everyone goes to bed - until a little voice calls, "Here, kitty, kitty! " and brings the imaginary friend back home. Originally published in France, this amusing and absurd book gains much of its humor from Maudet's action-packed pencil drawings, colored in stylish blocks of intense orange, blue, red and white. ELEPHANT'S STORY Written and illustrated by Tracey Campbell Pearson. 40 pp. Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) As Gracie walks home from school, a book falls from her backpack. A well-meaning elephant finds it, sniffs the book's words right up his trunk, and sneezes them out in a jumble. Animal friends try to put the words back, but the alligator wants to eat them, the seal wants to juggle them, and so on. Like all the best books, this one can be read on several levels, and kids ready for simple deciphering will enjoy Pearson's anagrams. CINDERELEPHANT Written and illustrated by Emma Dodd. 32 pp. Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) With elephant books, the laughs seem to take care of themselves. Put an elephant on a bicycle, add some very silly puns ("Prince Trunky's decisions carry a lot of weight"), and just like that, you've given your readers a serious case of the giggles. Or does Dodd just make it look easy? In her retelling of "Cinderella," the fairy godmother is a furry godmouse and the stepsisters warthogs. Like Cinderelephant's huge slipper, subject and story are an unlikely but delightful fit. TUG-OF-WAR Written and illustrated by John Burningham. 32 pp. Candlewick Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 7) Not every storybook elephant is amiable. Burningham has rewritten an African folktale he illustrated 45 years ago, and his elephant is downright nasty. He and his pompous friend Hippopotamus bully Hare, calling him a "big-whiskered nerd" and a "sickly little twerp." Hare may be small, but he has a better brain than his tormentors, and plays a pretty good trick on them. Burningham's new text is typically unsentimental; school-age boys will probably find it outrageously funny. QUEENIE One Elephant's Story By Corinne Fenton. Illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe. 24 pp. Candlewick Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 7) The true story of Queenie, an Indian elephant captured in the wild and taken to the Melbourne Zoo, is imbued with a sense of the unknowability of such animals. For 40 years, children and other visitors to the zoo took howdah rides on Queenie's back, attended her birthday parties and fed her apples. But in 1944, she killed a keeper for no apparent reason. Gouldthorpe's realistic illustrations and Fenton's carefully researched history give this tale due poignancy. BITS AND PIECES Written and illustrated by Judy Schachner. 32 pp. Dial. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5) "For a cat, Tink was an odd duck," Schachner begins, in the clever, joking voice of her Skippyjon Jones books. Seen in Schachner's fuzzy, soft-toned pictures, Tink, a bat-eared kitty with a brain "the size of a frozen pea," goofs around at home, licking the butter and generally getting into mischief. After a lifetime of hankering for the outdoors, he finally slips through the door and gets the adventure he's been yearning for. There's a lot more to it, and it's a delight from start to finish. CAPTAIN CAT Written and illustrated by Inga Moore. 48 pp. Candlewick Press. $15.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 7) Captain Cat just can't say no to a furry face: his ship, the Carlotta, has more cats aboard than sailors. One day a storm blows him clear off the charts. The island where he lands has an exuberant teenage queen and a dreadful infestation of rats; Captain Cat's feline cargo is suddenly very valuable. Moore's detailed crosshatched pictures - in a style familiar from her illustrations for "The Wind in the Willows" and "The Secret Garden" - add charm to this warmhearted story. MR. WUFFLES! Written and illustrated by David Wiesner. 32 pp. Clarion Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) In this brilliant book, Wiesner ("Flotsam," "Tuesday") unleashes the dramatic visual storytelling that won him three Caldecott Medals. Mr. Wuffles, a house cat, has a silly name that belies his predatory nature. Uninterested in toys, he takes notice of a tiny spaceship. Alternating full-page illustrations with graphic- novel-like grids, Wiesner tells a tale of alien visitors and their ant allies. The dusty space under the radiator turns out to be the suburban equivalent of the Lascaux caves. LOST CAT Written and illustrated by C. Roger Mader. 32 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) "Lost Cat," Mader's first book for children, is as handsome as the big-eyed tabby that stares out from its cover. The cat, bereft of her owner and searching for a new human to adopt, encounters a trucker, a motorcycle man and even a horse, all depicted from the cat's low-to-the-ground perspective. Mader uses pastels to create his close-up illustrations; deep-hued woodland and sunset scenes communicate how big, mysterious and enticing the natural world is to this formerly housebound cat. DRAT THAT CAT! Written and illustrated by Tony Ross. 32 pp. Andersen Press USA. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 9) Suzy Cat has so much white fur she looks like a cross between a puli and Cousin Itt. Though beloved, she is no angel: she scratches a sofa to ribbons, piddles in Dad's golf bag, bites Grandpa and pulls down the curtains. "Drat that cat!" resounds through the house - until Suzy decides to remind her humans just how much they really love her. Everything about this book feels British, from Ross's slapdash drawings (not unlike those of Quentin Blake) to the family's cozy house and unsentimental, madcap expressions. Enjoy with a cup of tea, real or imaginary. ONLINE A slide show of this week's illustrated books at nytimes.com/books.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 13, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Tink is a beloved indoor pet with a brain the size of a frozen pea. No matter, his family loves him to bits and pieces. Schachner uses charcoal pencil, pan pencil, pastels, watercolor, and cut paper to glorify the antics of this beloved cat in full-bleed spreads and panels. When Tink's peculiar eating habits include devouring a flip-flop, three Chinese lanterns, some dollhouse furniture, and a Slinky, it's off to the kitty clinic for a tummy treatment. Even when his family finds him a new kitten named Little (and he is) to keep him company indoors, Tink still yearns for another outdoor experience. Finally, on his twentieth birthday, the old boy sneaks outside and has some intoxicating adventures in the big wide world. In a vibrant double-page spread, Tink strolls into the night, viewing the moon, the owls, and other nighttime creatures, and then realizes he is lost. All ends well with reassuring smiles between the two cats as they rest on the blue polka-dotted armchair. Fans of Schachner's Skippyjon Jones series should lap this one up.--Gepson, Lolly Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Life goes on: the tiny kitten that materialized in Schachner's The Grannyman is now full grown-and something of an "odd duck," as the author puts it. Tink isn't the smartest cat ("maybe it was because his brain was the size of a frozen pea"), but he is beloved by his family, even when he tries to eat pool noodles, rubber bands, "and a slinky," as a long list explains. This is clearly a very personal book for Schachner (the back flap displays a picture of her family's cat of 20 years, Tink, with a slinky in his mouth), and the anecdotes feel ripped from oft-repeated family pet stories, whether it's Tink licking a stick of butter left out or the way his body takes on certain slinkylike dimensions when he tries to sneak outdoors. Schachner's warm prose and mixed-media artwork overflow with affection for both Tink and the SkippyJon-lookalike "little friend" who joins the family. But while cat-lovers (especially adult ones) will nod with recognition and appreciation, there's very little in this meandering, episodic story to entice a broader readership. Ages 3-5. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 1-Although Tink's brain is "the size of a frozen pea," his family loves their not-so-bright cat to bits. After a goatlike meal of household odds and ends lands him at the vet, their beloved boy gets a taste of the adventure and mystery of the great outdoors. His family gets him a brother for company, but he still longs for life on the outside. He finally sneaks out on his 20th birthday, and a day full of frolicking turns into a night of wandering, and he wakes lost and confused in an old tire. Two quick-thinking neighborhood girls save him from being carted off to a shelter and he is enthusiastically welcomed home. Schachner's smudgy, cheerful illustrations buoy up this story that is occasionally bogged down by an apparent attempt to squeeze the real Tink's long life into a few picture-book pages. Nonetheless, the author's fans and cat lovers will relate to the story of the feline's antics and the satisfying resolution.-Jenna Boles, Greene County Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2013. 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
Tink (The Grannyman), a not-too-bright indoor Siamese cat with a taste for adventure, sneaks outside. After an eventful night and a morning of adoration from neighborhood children, he's reunited with his worried family. The text is full of affection; expressive, pleasantly textured illustrations in charcoal, pastel, watercolor, and cut paper capture the love among Tink and his family members (both human and feline). (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Another charming slice-of-(real)-life story from veteran author/illustrator Schachner that will particularly please fans of The Grannyman (1999). Readers learn immediately that Tink, the feline main character who's loved to "bits and pieces" by his human family, is the kitten that was raised by Simon, the elderly Siamese cat in the earlier book. The narrator speculates that perhaps this unorthodox upbringing is the source of Tink's quirky habits. But really, his behavior seems completely catlike. Combining mixed-media illustrations and a conversational tone with a healthy dollop of humor, Schachner describes how Tink digs in the plants, sits on the newspaper, jumps into the middle of board games, stalks the bathtub and generally makes a beloved pest of himself. Breezy, colorful full-page paintings and multiple smaller vignettes are created with charcoal, pastel, watercolor and cut-paper collage to show these and other adventures, including a memorable trip to the vet. Though Schachner doesn't explicitly identify Tink's family, fans will likely recognize the two adorable girls who are his "sisters" as well as their parents, and they may even have some suspicions about the big-eared Siamese kitten that eventually joins the household. Their cozy home life contrasts effectively with the mild adventure Tink manages to tuck into his old age. Fellow cat fanciers will appreciate Schachner's low-key tale and share her unabashed love for her furry friend. (Picture book. 4-7)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
