Publishers Weekly Review
| The too-sweet language of this bedtime rhyme is belied by Joyce's dark and atmospheric illustrations. Every night Nicholas Cricket plays his banjo with the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band. ``Moonlight glows and summer wind blows,'' as ``peep-peep-peepers come dancing through the vines'' and ``rabbits come dancing on tip-tippy toes'' because ``the music is just so grand.'' The poem's meter is annoyingly irregular--``In the blue blue night / when the moon is bright / underneath the leaves of summer, / if we're quiet and quick''--and often predictable. But Joyce ( Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo ; George Shrinks ) cleverly evokes the dimly lit speakeasies of Hollywood. Monocled, zoot-suited insects frequent Nick's Cafe where a lady bug wears a red fez, a turtle sports a top hat, and at dawn ``the Bug-a-Wugs grow sleepy and still.'' Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
School Library Journal Review
| K-Gr 4-- Perhaps it's the jacket art's portrait of our hero with two perfectly functional sets of arms spotlighted on a stage that generates the aura of fantasy. Or it might even be the hint of the quasi-classical Butterfly's Ball in the sequence of scenes showing the arrival of the insects to Nick's place to dance the night away to the tunes of the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band. The poem's refrain tells readers that ``The music is just so grand,'' and there's a foot-tapping beat to the variously rhymed lines that demands reading aloud to validate the claim. Phrases such as: ``Slap-a-spoon drummers and the crick-crick-crickety kazoo hummers'' typify the descriptive candences. Comes the dawn, all ``go back with the moonlight under the hill.'' The paintings are not always as joyous. There is in their frequent use of shadow and silhouette a touch of the mysterious, even the sinister. In the creation of his cast of anthropomorphic critters and in setting them into melodramatic and crowded scenes, Joyce creates a benign Walpurgisnacht. One double-page spread depicts a club full of frenzied dancers that rivals one from one of the Star Wars films. With Joyce's illustrations, it's not just the music that's ``so grand.'' --Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, Columbus (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Booklist Review
| Ages 5-8. "Nicholas Cricket plays every night / in the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band. / Moonlight glows and summer wind blows, / rabbits come dancing on tippy toes. / The music is just so grand!" That lilting opening is a beguiling entree into a nocturnal fantasy in which Nicholas Cricket and his band play dazzling good-time music for the residents of nearby fields and streams. Joyce's imaginative pictures, see issue cover, depart from the expected by casting much of the action in a decidedly uptown mode. Top-hatted gents squire ladies in gowns in and out of clubs that ooze sophistication--no mean feat, considering these are insects and animals. The palette is dark, the creatures sleek and distinctive--Nicholas and company sport four suit-coated limbs, the better to fiddle and strum. A splendid toe-tapping night for all. --Denise Wilms |
Horn Book Review
| Nicholas Cricket picks his banjo, and the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band plays grand music, but the lively verse and even livelier illustrations are unfortunately marred by racial stereotypes. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Kirkus Review
| Nicholas Cricket plays every night/in the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band./Moonlight glows and summer wind blows,/rabbits come dancing on tip-tippy toes./The music is just so grand!"" So begins the almost mesmerizing, rhythmic verse that evokes a sumptuous, nightlong, music-making celebration in the animal world, with banjo-strumming Nick leading the way. Joyce's elegantly defined, fantastical paintings are just right for this imaginative event: setting the creatures in theatrical intents--reached through a steamy, moonlit riverside landscape--and dressing them to the nines in his best F. Scott Fitzgerald style, he spins this gossamer piece into a comic, stylish picture book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. |
