Review by New York Times Review
autumn : when the falling leaves drift by the window, and the days dwindle down to a precious few, and songwriters wax especially melancholic. It makes sense that we celebrate our spookiest holidays, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, when the newly crisp air carries with it premonitions of loss and mortality. But autumn is also a time of renewal and harvest - and of reckoning, as in Judaism's Days of Awe. It is our subtlest season, our bittersweet season, one that can prompt feelings of deep yearning. C. S. Lewis wrote about this in "Surprised by Joy," when he recalled reading Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin" as a boy: "It troubled me with what I can only describe as the idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened ... the experience was one of intense desire." For me, fall evokes a kind of present-tense nostalgia - a wallow in fleetingness, perhaps. I hope "Wee Sister Strange" reaches a large enough audience to trouble an entirely new generation with the idea of autumn. Its eeriness will merit repeat Halloween readings, as you may have guessed from the title, but it also echoes with deeper seasonal resonance. The story begins: They say there's a girl Who lives by the woods In a crooked old house With no garden but gloom. She doesn't have parents. No one knows her name. But the people in town Call her Wee Sister Strange. One thing I admire about Holly Grant's verse is its pluck: Sometimes it rhymes and sometimes it doesn't; it goes where it wants, but always seems to scan. Wee Sister Strange turns out to be as independentminded as her creator. She is very much an autumnal creature, an October forest sprite with yellow eyes and a garland of red, orange and yellow leaves in her auburn hair. She cavorts with owls and bears, enjoys a wary detente with wolves and is equally at home in the bog where "she swims oh so deep / And she walks on the slime / Where the bog creatures creep." K .G. Campbell's illustrations are both gorgeous and mysterious - again, seasonally appropriate - and he manages to make even that slime and those bog creatures alluring. But he saves his best for first: The book's initial spreads, before night falls and Sister's adventures begin, are masterpieces of waning yellow-orange light and lengthening purple-grey shadows. We eventually discover that Sister is searching for something. What that is, and where and how she finds it, involves a leap into bedtime metafiction that could have felt forced, or cute; instead, the ending strikes emotional chords that are hard to articulate but should be familiar to anyone who has felt the pull of October's shifting moods, its sorrow and comfort. I love "Wee Sister Strange." I think it would have sent C. S. Lewis over the moon (a harvest moon, preferably). "The Call of the Swamp" is more of a November tale. In Marco Soma's illustrations, the brown leaves have mostly fallen, the skies are cold and gray, and nearly every spread features a light but steady rain. The emotional temperature is also grayer, sadder. Like "Wee Sister Strange," Davide Cali's narrative unfolds with the matter-offact oddness of a centuries-old fairy tale. It begins, as so many such stories do, with a childless couple. When they find a newborn at the edge of the swamp, "it seemed like a gift from heaven, and they paid no attention to the fact that he had gills like a fish." They don't worry if he has parents either, "because he had found a new mom and dad now." They name him Boris. Boris. That made me laugh. "The Call of the Swamp" pulls off the rare trick of blending whimsy with genuine ache. Boris has a good life with his parents. He goes to school, rides a bike, plays with friends, is loved. But his three pairs of wavy external gills mark Boris as an outsider, and one day "a salty smell" borne on the wind - "the scent of the swamp" - stirs a longing for old haunts. He runs away ... but from home or to home? "The Call of the Swamp" could be read as a fable about adoption, and at points the text edges toward "issue book" reassurance. But for the most part, Cali transmits his tale on older, Grimm-attuned frequencies, while Soma's illustrations possess a dry, surreal wit that serves the story's poignancy well. The lovely resolution will appeal to any child who has ever felt the sting of not knowing where he or she belongs - which is pretty much all of them. And us. "THE WOLF, THE DUCK & THE MOUSE" and "Creepy Pair of Underwear! " aren't nearly as evocative as the two previous books, but both are very funny, with morbid senses of humor that will hit Halloween sweet spots. Mac Barnett's story begins, "Early one morning, a mouse met a wolf, and he was quickly gobbled up." Not to worry: Inside the wolf, the mouse finds not death and digestion but a duck who has set up housekeeping. "You'd be surprised what you find inside of a wolf," the duck explains. It turns out the wolf's gut harbors the best party in town, and some readers' sympathies might shift toward the carnivore - aided by the great Jon Klassen's droll paintings; no one does perturbed animals better. He and Barnett previously collaborated on the award-winning "Extra Yarn" and "Sam and Dave Dig a Hole." Just this spring they published the marvelous "Triangle." I bet they're a great party themselves. "Creepy Pair of Underwear!" is a sequel to Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown's Caldecott Honor-winning "Creepy Carrots!" of 2012. Jasper Rabbit and his tuft of curly hair return for a tall tale that owes a spiritual debt to Dr. Seuss's "What Was I Scared Of?" and that story's irrepressible if empty pale green pants. "Creepy Pair of Underwear!" may lack the surprise and sense of discovery of "Creepy Carrots!," but if you aren't immediately drawn to a book that co-stars a pair of glow-in-thedark jockey shorts decorated with a Frankenstein's monster face and gifted with Jason Voorhees-like indestructibility. . .well, I expect responses to this book will be binary. Love-hate. Trick or treat. bruce handy is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 7, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Returning to their Caldecott Honor Book world of Creepy Carrots! (2012), Reynolds and Brown put young Jasper Rabbit through even creepier, more scream-inducing horror, now with a pair of glow-in-the-dark underpants that, like the cat in the famous song (or a number of horror staples), keep . . . coming . . . back. Jasper doesn't realize that his prized new undies glow, until the bedroom lights go out. His dismay quickly changes to terror after he stuffs them in the laundry hamper and wakes up wearing them. The underwear refuses to stay in the garbage can or a box mailed to China, and they even come back after being cut up into snippets. Featuring a grimacing monster face in the illustrations and a green glow made even more lurid by the solid black backgrounds, the scary skivvies seem to leap out at viewers with each page turn. But then, when Jasper finally does at last find a way to dispose of them, the utter darkness in his room sparks a change of heart and a trip back to the local undie emporium. This strikes the ideal balance between frightening and hilarious, and like the underwear itself, readers are guaranteed to keep coming back for this storytime platinum!--Peters, John Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Five years after the Caldecott Honor-winning Creepy Carrots!, Jasper Rabbit returns, and he's being frightened by something equally improbable: the green undies he insisted his mother buy for him. With their "ghoulish, greenish glow" and a stitched and bolted face à la Frankenstein's monster, these tighty not-so-whities start keeping Jasper up at night, and nothing-not even throwing them away or mailing them to China-can prevent them from returning to his bedroom. Once again, Reynolds and Brown are in perfect comedic synch as they channel the surprises and creeping dread of a thriller. Brown's noir-style b&w illustrations make the most of the premise, and the innate absurdity of being afraid of one's undergarments will be a surefire winner with many kids. Ages 4-8. Agent: Paul Rodeen, Rodeen Literary Management. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Jasper Rabbit and his mother go shopping one Thursday for much-needed new underwear. Bypassing the boring white pairs, Jasper begs his mom to get the peculiar looking but comfy neon green underwear-even if it resembles Frankenstein's monster. Reluctantly, Jasper's mother agrees, and so one pair of the psychedelic undies goes home with them. That night, however, Jasper tries to get rid of the underwear but it returns, "staring at him with that ghoulish, greenish glow." The garment's bright color and changing expressions are highlighted by their placement on dark backgrounds. Finally, Jasper successfully buries the underwear in a deep, deep hole. A totally black spread is followed by one with Jasper's huge round eyes, fearful of the dark, now dull without the green glow. After he digs up his original pair, Jasper spends his whole allowance and festoons his room with an entire collection of creepy green underwear. First introduced in Creepy Carrots, Jasper's antics are equally humorous and appropriately but safely spooky. VERDICT An enjoyable and comfortably spine-tingling picture book for a Halloween or any day storytime.-Maria B. Salvadore, formerly at District of Columbia Public Library © Copyright 2017. 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
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear. Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: "Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious." The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown's choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear's glowing greenand glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his "I'm a big rabbit" assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he's wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don't stay gone. It's only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he's not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown's illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper's every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear's expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale. Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won't leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss' tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
