Big Jim and the White-legged Moose - Hardcover

Arnosky, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688108644 ISBN 13: 9780688108649

Publisher: Lothrop Lee & Shepard, 1999

Synopsis

Based on an actual real-life encounter with a bull mouse, author-illustrator Jim Arnosky provides music for read-aloud rhymes and entertaining illustrations of his adventure in the woods.

About this title

Reviews

Grade 2-5Arnosky, who has provided young readers with solid information on a vast array of animals, has written a song based on his one-time encounter with a large bull moose. It begins with promise but after the animal forces Big Jim to drop his sketchbook and escape into a tree, the action ends abruptly and unsatisfactorily. The artists sturdy, fluid line and ability to incorporate humor into full-color, naturalistic drawings, as in the Crinkleroot tales (S & S), remains strong, but the verse strains (rhyming cool with bull) and the use of unnatural word order (An expert tracker, Big Jim was./He soon was on the trail) disrupts a smooth read. Music and a note about the songs origins are provided.Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This tall tale's blend of fact and fiction falls flat. Unlike the All About series and Arnosky's other books that focus closely on animal habitats and other factual details, this one spins a yarn based on the author's own real encounter with an enormous moose. While driving home from a fishing trip, "Big Jim" sees an animal roadblock ahead, "nine feet tall from head to hoof." He feels frustrated not to have "a pencil for to draw the white-legged bull" and tracks the moose the next day in order to sketch him. When he suddenly finds himself face-to-face with his quarry, Big Jim bolts up a tree to safety, but loses his art suppliesAso he is again unable to record the sight. Neither character is developed in a way that would keep readers involved. Though the opening illustrations of geese and the eponymous moose show signs of Arnosky's signature attention to detail, succeeding spreads convert the moose to a kind of Bullwinkle caricature. Images of Big Jim clinging to a birch that bends under his weight or of the moose eating leaves within inches of Jim's face border on mawkish. A song (inconveniently split in the middle by the story) makes up the endpapers. Ages 4-up. (May)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Arnosky has written a ballad and put it into picture-book form. The ballad, which is based on a real-life encounter Arnoksy had, tells the story of nature artist Big Jim's run-in with an enormous moose. Big Jim tracks the moose by following its "massive hoofprints," but the moose takes him by surprise and he ends up in a tree without his sketchpad and pencil. At the end, all Big Jim can do is lounge in the tree and watch closely as the moose munches on sweet birch leaves. Arnosky's style here is more cartoonish than usual. His acrylic paintings exaggerate the realistic details that his keen naturalist's eye observes just enough for a comical effect. The pictures aren't as lovely as those in earlier works, such as Raccoons and Ripe Corn (1987), but their child appeal may lead youngsters to Arnosky's other books. Sheet music for the ballad is included, beginning in the front of the book and concluding at the back. Susan Dove Lempke

Edition details

• Publisher: Lothrop Lee & Shepard
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688108644
• ISBN 13: 9780688108649
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32