Bad Baby (review)
2005; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2005.0022
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoReviewed by: Bad Baby Karen Coats MacDonald, Ross Bad Baby; written and illus. by Ross MacDonald. Porter/ Roaring Brook, 200532p ISBN 1-59643-064-8$16.95 R 5-8 yrs Muscle-bound, square-jawed Jack is having another perfect day of superhero work, saving the earth from fire-breathing dragons and falling meteorites and whatnot, but he can't help feeling that something is missing. When he hears that he is getting a new baby sister, he realizes that what he has been missing is a playmate. Before long, though, the "wee tiny baby" has morphed into a Godzilla-sized menace, raining mayhem and destruction down on the world of Jack's fecund imagination. The "bad baby" rampages all over Jack's urban landscape, forcing Jack's humiliation in multiple ways as he dresses in pink ribbons and bows for a tea party, narrowly [End Page 145] escapes (and sometimes doesn't escape) being flattened by the baby's enormous chubby toes, and gets blown sky-high by her sizable vocal capacity. Manga meets kewpie doll meets Campbell-soup kid in MacDonald's adorable gargantuan infant, a deliciously absurd nemesis for the suit-clad Jack with his dreamy 1940s-style curls; retro styling and comic-book camp punch up the frenzied comedy, making the illustrations a perfect background for a readaloud in dramatically old-fashioned voice-over announcer tones. Sepia and golden shades punctuated by blasts of red and tempered by dusky blue keep the energy high as the baby runs amok until falling asleep under the exhausted eyes of big brother, now restored to the harried, muck-splotched boy that he is in real life. Wit, irony, and all-too-actual chaos reign in this clever take on the new baby in the house. Copyright © 2005 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Referência(s)