With smart witticisms to launch each quick-paced chapter, Isaiah is truly a mouse that roars.
Prolific Patterson and frequent collaborator Grabenstein offer this charming tale of Isaiah, a blue (yes—bright blue!) mouse, and his effort to break his family out of a very bad place.
Isaiah and his 96 siblings have been raised in a lab since birth, so they don’t really know what the outside world is like. Isaiah’s big brother Benji was the one to come up with a plan to break them all out…but only Isaiah is fortunate enough to make it to freedom. Alone in a huge and unfamiliar world filled with unexpected pleasures and dangers, Isaiah is lucky to find Mikayla, a beautiful but ordinary mouse with an extraordinary talent: she sings! Mikayla brings Isaiah back to her family (appropriately called a “mischief” in mouse vernacular), who formally adopts him. But Isaiah misses his original family, and with the help of his new relatives and a human friend or two, he mounts a daring rescue to save his siblings. Narrator Isaiah is a well-read mouse, and, without being pedantic about it, he shows off his vocabulary at every opportunity; his literacy comes in handy more than once, demonstrating its practicality as well. Sutphin provides black-and-white spot illustrations that recall the great mouse protagonists of the mid-20th century.
With smart witticisms to launch each quick-paced chapter, Isaiah is truly a mouse that roars. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-34956-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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