Song of the Circus - Hardcover

reschool-Grade 2--This is a high-energy story with a generous array of odd characters, a fierce tiger, and two kids raised within arena life. When the clowns' bicycle tire goes flat, a series of events ensues, resulting in the tiger's escape. Unhappy with circus food, all he wants is a tasty meal of child. Instead the kids, feisty and defiant, stare him down, causing him to slink off without satisfying his appetite. The crowd cheers, thinking that what they have witnessed is all just part of the show. The rhyming tale moves at a lilting pace. After several characters are introduced (some of them curiously superfluous), the action builds quickly to a heart-stopping crescendo, much like a live circus. The type changes in size and is not always square to the page, which adds to the animated nature of the tale. Cundiff's gouache illustrations are clever and fun. They have lots of bright color, and the backgrounds change in a rainbow flow. Characters are often only partially seen or they're upside down or flying about. They represent a child's roaming-eye vision of the Big Top, both wild and wacky. The children themselves are diminutive; they look like stuffed dolls. The tiger is loosely drawn, an elongated cat with a large head and fangs. However, with both the text and illustrations striving for the same over-the-top experience, the sum of the parts is a lyric if not quite a song.
Martha Topol, Traverse Area District Library, Traverse City, MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Thriller-writer Duncan, whose picture book I Walk at Night described a cat's nocturnal prowlings, raises a few hairs (not too many) in this high-spirited circus romp. Cartwheeling along to a familiar rhythm, hyperbolic verses introduce a trapeze artist and strongman, a little clown named Bop and his petite friend Gisselda, "who learned to crawl On canvas tarps, and to toss a ball To a Fat Baboon, and who took her naps On tattooed shoulders and spangled laps. For she is a Child of the Circus." Suddenly, the narrative veers in a dangerous direction: "Now don't get scared, butyou see that cage?" A turn of the page reveals a grouchy tiger "so mean and wild That he dreams of eating a Circus Child!" When a flat tire sends the bicycle clowns flying into midair, they set off a wild chain of events that ends with an elephant shattering the tiger's cage. The big cat races straight for Gisselda, "exactly the child that he longed to eat!" Bop interferes, and he and Gisselda bravely avert the threat, earning wild cheers; the audience "didn't know That the act wasn't part of the normal show." In a style that recalls Marjorie Priceman's work, Cundiff (Stoneheart) paints in a wild carnival palette. Her extravagant costumes and distorted sizes and shapes intensify the larger-than-life proportions of this big-top tale. Ages 3-7.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.