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* Gobbled up by a passing wolf, a woodland mouse bemoans his fate that is, until his wailing awakens the stomach's resident duck, cozily tucked in a bed. The duck then invites the mouse to a candlelit breakfast of toast and jam, laid out on a tastefully set table. Kids will already be giggling over the stomach's unexpected amenities (You'd be surprised what you find inside of a wolf, says the duck), as the mouse marvels at his new surroundings. The pair have an excellent day together, cooking and talking, and when the duck points out the advantageous lack of predators in the wolf's belly, the mouse concedes that this life is pretty good. But when their impromptu dance party gives the wolf a painful stomachache, his moans attract a nearby hunter. Sensing trouble, the duck and mouse sally forth to protect their home in spectacularly hysterical fashion. Barnett and Klassen's collaborations are always good for a laugh, and this one banks heavily on absurdity, to great effect. Klassen's mixed-media artwork transforms the wolf's interior into a delightfully domestic scene, and Barnett's writing is peppered with amusing details. This original pourquoi tale will make a fantastic choice for storytimes, as kids will want to dance along with the duck and mouse when they're not rolling in the aisles, of course. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Beloved, acclaimed, and best-selling anything by this duo is going to go fast.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Barnett's collaborations with Klassen often draw humor from knowledge withheld. Readers giggled because they knew Triangle was up to no good, and they saw the giant diamond that Sam and Dave missed while digging. In this big-hearted, gleeful caper, everyone shares the laughs. A sweet mouse with pink ears encounters a wolf in the forest. He escapes, right? Wrong. The wolf gobbles him up. Which is awful, right? Nope. It's surprisingly comfortable inside the wolf. In fact, a duck is already in residence. "Where did you get jam?" the mouse asks over breakfast. "And a tablecloth?" It's the wolf who suffers. "I feel like I'll burst," he moans, as the mouse and duck feast over a candlelit dinner. When a hunter closes in on the wolf, help comes from an unlikely place (and gives new meaning to the phrase "inner resources"). Klassen trades the spare look of his Hat books for a softer, more painterly style. Much of the action plays out against the warm, walnut brown wash of the wolf's insides; Klassen lingers on the soft grays of fur and feathers. The domestic trappings of the wolf's interior provide laughs (there's a full kitchen and record player, the mouse gets hold of a hockey stick), as do touches of Gallic elegance (the mouse and duck dress for dinner, and there is wine). The story's timeless, fable-like feel is bolstered by its traditional cast and old-fashioned fairy-tale language: "Oh, woe!" cries the wolf. "Oh shame!" Life can turn the tables pretty quickly, Barnett suggests, and only those whose outlooks are flexible will flourish. "I may have been swallowed," says the duck, "but I have no intention of being eaten." A rare treasure of a story, the kind that seems to have been around forever. Ages 4-8. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-When a little mouse gets gobbled up by a hungry wolf, all seems lost until he makes an unexpected friend in the belly of the beast: a duck that may have been swallowed but has "no intention of being eaten." Indeed, life is not so bad inside the wolf. There's a comfortable bed, a grand dining room table, and a fully functional chef's kitchen. As the duck explains to the bewildered mouse, "You'd be surprised what you find inside a wolf." No longer do these small creatures worry about being devoured; they can sit back and relax in their confinement. They even conspire to get the wolf to down some good wine and cheese. Their wining and dining soon gives their host a terrible stomachache, attracting the attention of a hunter. Suddenly, all three lives are at risk and the new friends must act quickly to save themselves-and their safe and swanky new digs. Barnett's shrewd wit and subtle sense of irony come across expertly in short, snappy sentences, while the repeated refrain of "Oh woe!" and the pourquoi-tale ending lend the story a folkloric tone. Klassen's mixed-media art has a collagelike quality; the main characters and set pieces appear as cutouts placed against richly textured backgrounds of deep browns and black, with golden touches of pink and ocher, adding to the sense that readers are watching a dramatic play unfold. VERDICT Reminiscent of classic animal fables, with this winning team's signature humor and charm, this is a first purchase for any picture book collection.-Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal © 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 Horn Book Review
The opening of this latest Barnett/Klassen collaboration (an original pourquoi tale) seems to presage dire events: Early one morning, a mouse met a wolf, and he was quickly gobbled up. But once inside, the mouse meets a duck, who lives well in the wolfs stomach, with all the storybook comforts of home: a red-checkered tablecloth, jam and toast for breakfast, homemade soup for lunch, a phonograph. The mouse asks permission to stay, and when the answer is an enthusiastic yes, the two celebrate by dancing up a storm. This gives the wolf an awful stomachache, and he howls, attracting the attention of a hunter (who looks like Santa Claus in the role of a Hollywood lumberjack); the hunter shoots, but the duck and mouse defend their home by leading a charge out of the wolfs stomach and frightening the hunter away (Oh woe! Oh death! These woods are full of evil and wraiths!). The grateful wolf offers to grant his saviors any favor they wish, andWell, you can guess what they asked for. Cue a double-page illustration of the friends partying it up, back home in the (once-again-painful) belly of the beast. And that, folks, is why wolves howl. This is a delightfully entertaining mash-up of familiar storytelling tropes combined in a wholly original way. Barnetts language is both funny and rich (for those who remember the cartoon Fractured Fairy Tales, that tone exactly). Klassens mixed-media illustrations are concentrated down to their essences, with colors so subtle the art almost appears black-and-white at first glance; striking tableaux that seem to capture each moment at the very peak of the action propel the story forward. martha v. parravano (c) Copyright 2017. 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
Swallowed by a wolf, a mouse and duck defend their cozy belly from a hunter.When the mouse is swallowed, its lament wakes duck, abed "in the belly of the beast." Over breakfast, the mouse asks, "Where did you get jam?And a tablecloth?" The response: "You'd be surprised what you find inside of a wolf." Readers will be, too: the duck manages a shipshape household that includes a four-burner cooktop, a nice set of knives, and formalwear for fancy dinners. The duck explains that living inside the wolf eliminates that daily, existential fear of being swallowed by wolves. The mouse stays; the two celebrate by dancing to records. The wolf, meanwhile, roils with stomach pain, which is then worsened by the duck's suggested "cure." "Eat a hunk of good cheese. And a flagon of wine! And some beeswax candles." When a hunter corners the ailing wolf, the mouse insists on fighting to "defend our home." It's this enterprising pair that wins the day: the hunter flees from its unexpected, armed trajectory out of the wolf's mouth. The grateful wolf extends a favorwhich the duo redeems in phonograph records. Klassen's signature palette, compositions, and comedic, horizontally elongated eyes are here along with the heightened action propelled by Barnett's narrative. Barnett wrestles Aesop and Grimm into pretzels, adding a groaner ending ("And that's why the wolf howls at the moon") for the mustard. A howl. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
