| Imagination -- Juvenile fiction |
| Play -- Juvenile fiction |
| Fathers and daughters -- Juvenile fiction |
| Families -- Juvenile fiction |
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Summary
Summary
Matthew Cordell, Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator of Wolf in the Snow , delivers yet another warm and delightful picture book in King Alice.
Alice and her family are stuck indoors on a snowy day. Alice loves to read, and when her dad suggests that she make her own book, she snaps out of her "I'm bored" mode and makes up a story that lasts till the lights go out later that night.
Here is a book that celebrates books, reading, and an imaginative way that one family handles being housebound.
Praise for Matthew Cordell
"Beautifully paced . . . ultimately reassuring." -- Wall Street Journal on Wolf in the Snow
" Shows the power of kindness and bravery. Reminiscent of William Steig's Brave Irene , Cordell's book is a perfect choice for the dark days of winter." --IndieBound on Wolf in the Snow
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-King Alice (as she insists on being called) is considerably more excited about being stuck inside on a snow day than her father is. Nonetheless, he gamely goes along with her demands for his constant attention while Mom tends to the baby and everyone's nutritional needs. The king and Sir Dad compose and illustrate an extensive chronicle of their pursuits from tea parties to pirate battles to unicorn stampedes. The best fun here is in Cordell's cartooned illustrations of the biracial family who never get out of their pajamas until bath time. King Alice crayons the visuals of her story on lined paper while Sir Dad transcribes her text. In the framing story, readers see their real world setting complete with burping baby, ginger cat, and a floor strewn with toys. From the first spread of the unshaven father, yawning and scratching his butt while his daughter informs him that she's to be addressed as "King Alice the First," kids will know that they are in for a wild ride through a little girl's fecund imagination. That Sir Dad is such a willing accomplice (but not a complete pushover) makes this cozy story a delight to share in multiple readings. -VERDICT This delightful book-within-a-book will inspire domestic mayhem while enduring a snow day. A must-have.-Miriam Lang Budin, formerly at Chappaqua Library, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Alice's father emerges foggily from his bedroom one morning to greet his daughter. (She, her mother, and baby sibling have brown skin, while the rumpled dad has white skin and Fred Flintstone-style stubble.) "Morning, Alice," he mumbles. "KING Alice! The First!" she corrects. It's a snow day, and after casting about for amusements, the two laboriously write and draw a book about King Alice, chapter by chapter, leaving it ("Okay, I'm bored now") and coming back to it ("IDEA!") throughout the day. Caldecott Award-winner Cordell (Wolf in the Snow) mimics child-style print and crayon drawings for a tale that features knights, pirates, and unicorns. Alice's story-and her story's story-get their laughs from close observation. Cordell knows how children speak ("I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry I bonked you with my unicorn, Daddy"), what they like to do ("Let's make... super-sparkly strawberry muffins again!"), and how their stories sound ("King Alice yelled, 'This is some delicious tea!'"). Readers will treasure their time with Alice's father, who allows his daughter to be exactly who she is, and King Alice, who leads her family on adventures even when they don't leave the house. Ages 3-5. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Dad's amusing thought bubbles reveal his dread of daughter Alice's abundant ideas for their snowbound day ahead. Once Alice decides they'll make a book, the engaging story-within-a-story features King Alice and her "royal brave knights" on adventures that resemble the biracial family's activities: mealtimes, princess tea, unicorn party, and more. Cordell's loose-lined mixed-media illustrations capture the imagination, mayhem, and love in this family. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
King Alice lays down the law when her family is snowbound.After anointing herself King Alice ("You meanQueen?" Sir Dad asks; "No! KING!"but this is not a book about overturning gender norms), the pint-sized monarch decides she and her father will make a book together. With a little nudging from Mom, their story begins with "King Alice the First and the royal brave knights having breakfast." Chapter 2 continues it with a princess tea party. And so the day goes, with a red-bathrobe-clad Alice moving from activity to activity as her beleaguered father tries to keep up (at one point Alice abruptly begins Chapter 5: " What happened to chapters 3 and 4?' Dad wondered pointlessly") and her mother takes care of the baby and feeds the family. Cordell gets the aimlessness of a day without structure perfectly as well as the elliptical, arbitrary composition style of a young child in Alice's writing. Unfortunately, the result is a rather aimless plot, one that seems to place Dad's frazzlement at its center rather than Alice's ebullience. Cordell's characteristically scratchy illustrations depict a happy, mixed-race family (Dad presents white, Mom has brown skin and black hair, and the two children have light-brown skin and black hair) in a comfortably messy house. Alice's metafictive story appears on faux lined paper and cleverly mirrors the events of the day.Sweet and loving characters can't quite make up for a lack of plot. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Young Alice, with her boundless imagination and energy, appears to rule the roost in her interracial family of four. On a particularly snowy day, when the family is housebound, Alice comes up with a variety of activities to while away the hours, and creating a book about King Alice and her adventures is the one she decides to pursue. She and her indulgent dad write and illustrate several chapters about King Alice the First! A-a-a-n-d . . . the royal brave knights! which include a tea party, pirates, and unicorns. Caldecott medalist Cordell (Wolf in the Snow, 2017) offers up engaging illustrations in watercolor, colored pencil, markers, and pen-and-ink that are enjoyably reminiscent of both Tony Ross and Quentin Blake. Alice, who is full of creative ideas, uses her scepter as a backscratcher, while her patient father wears a tiara, a necklace, and red earrings. The day is segmented into specified periods: breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time, bath time, and bed time, with the addition of a 15-minute time-out after a frantic unicorn stampedes into Dad. Cordell's title pays delightful homage to books, writing, and illustrating, while revealing a happy, pajama-clad family spending a fun-filled, though frenetic, day together.--Maryann Owen Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
FRIENDS, I BRING YOU DELIGHTS! Glittery, silly, rambunctious delights. Five new humorous children's books offer young readers a plethora of pleasure, plus pants for potatoes. Though very different from one another, four of the five feature classic children's book imagery in one form or another. The fifth features, as I said, potato pants. IN KING ALICE (Feiwel and Friends, 32 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), Matthew Cordell, who won the 2017 Caldecott Medal for "Wolf in the Snow," captures the joy (for kids) and frequent exasperation (for parents) of the dreary, slushy indoor snow day. On a blustery day off from school, young Alice is determined to fill her hours with adventure, enlisting her willing, but bedraggled, dad into the fun. After declaring herself king ("You mean queen," suggests her father. "No! King!" says Alice), Her Highness sets out to cram every ounce of fun from their indoor family time, capturing ah of it in a book-within-a-book recounting her adventures. Not even a timeout for the crime of accidental unicorn bopping deters from the fun with Dad. Cordell's art is lively and especially funny when presented from the king's crayons. Children may enjoy the fact that even a Caldecott Medal winner is not above a little gastrointestinal humor (this child certainly did). Alice's mother and baby brother are also along for the ride. Parents will laugh in recognition at the household chaos busy young minds can create during stretches of unexpected indoor time. DAVID EZRA STEIN'S INTERRUPTING CHICKEN AND THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE (Candlewick, 48 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) reunites readers with their inquisitive feathered friend from the Caldecott Honor book "Interrupting Chicken." This time, Chicken returns from school excited to read with her father. Why? Because her teacher, Mrs. Gizzard, has told her that every good story has an "elephant of surprise." Her father thinks that perhaps Chicken means something else, but, as we learned in "King Alice," fathers are easily confused. (It wasn't "Queen" Alice, nor is it the "element of surprise.") Chicken knows precisely what she's looking for - she's on an elephant hunt, and she finds one in every story she reads. Did you know, for example, that Rapunzel features a bubbly blue elephant with exquisite blond braids? Now you do. Stein's art is rich, textured and varied. Like "King Alice," this book features stories within stories. Ah with elephants. Lots and lots of elephants, each of them, as advertised, surprising. THOSE WHO love their artwork textured will adore JUST ADD GLITTER (Beach Lane, 32 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), a collaboration between the author Angela DiTerlizzi and the illustrator Samantha Cotterill. On a rainy day, the mail carrier leaves a box on a little girl's stoop. And just in time. She and her cat are feeling "bored and ignored." What better way to "put some shine upon your crown" than an unexpected package of glitter? Within moments, the girl is spreading sparkles everywhere: on her paper crown, paper dinosaurs and stars, and ah over the bedroom rug. If your walls are "looking for glitz," or just a few more "flashy bits," glitter is just the thing for you. The cat, though, seems hip to a problem with which parents are all too familiar: Glitter gets everywhere. Pretty soon they're chin deep in the stuff. After some judicious (and from experience I would say overly optimistic) sweeping, the glitter is gone, with the little girl and cat discovering that you don't need a special delivery to find a little sparkle. With its fun rhymes and blinged-out pages, "Just Add Glitter" will appeal to those young crafts enthusiasts who have never met a surface that couldn't use a little extra razzle-dazzle. A YOUNG KNIGHT guards against frightful creatures in Jon Agee's the wall in the MIDDLE OF THE BOOK (Dial, 40 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), which uses the clever conceit of the book's "gutter" - that space between each set of two pages - as a boundary between ah that is safe on one side, and ah that is scary on the other. Our knight explains to his readers that the brick wall we see there keeps him safe from a scary menagerie of animals. Tigers and rhinos and gorillas - oh my! Yet, the true menace on the other side of the book is a bearded ogre who would undoubtedly "eat me up" if he ever caught our young hero. Thank goodness for the high wall protecting him. But something seems to be happening on his "safe" side ... something that may require the knight to rethink everything he thought he knew about barriers and who resides on the other side. Agee is the creator of many acclaimed books including "Milo's Hat Trick" and "It's Only Stanley," and this deceptively simple story offers a genuine lesson in the value of all creatures, great and small. Whatever they may look like, oftentimes our biggest fears come from the uncertainty of not being able to see across a boundary. And sometimes, the greatest dangers are right in front of our own two eyes. FINALLY, I PROMISED potato pants, and that is exactly what you're going to get. Laurie Keller's whimsical potato pants: (Holt, 32 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) tells the tale of the one day - the only day - in which Lance Vance's Fancy Pants Store is selling potato pants. A horde of naked potatoes rushes to the store by "spud bus" and "tuber Uber" to grab those tuber trousers because "once they're gone, they're gone! " Unfortunately for our hero, a big, purple eggplant has trespassed into the store, the same eggplant who rudely shoved our hero out of the way the previous day. Now, potato is worried that the eggplant will see him again and he will once again suffer at the hands of that bullying aubergine. Meanwhile, ah the good potato pants are flying off the racks. How will our potato pal get his pants? As in "The Wall in the Middle of the Book," Keller presents a worstcase scenario and gradually dispels the fear. Might he have mistaken the eggplant's intentions? There's plenty of silly illustrations and attractive potato pants to keep chuckling readers turning pages to the end. MICHAEL IAN BLACK'S latest picture book is "I'm Sad," illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi.