Red Ranger Came Calling

In a holiday tale by the creator of the cartoon Bloom County, a boy petitions an old hermit living on an island in the Pacific Northwest for a bicycle named after the hero of his favorite movie serial.

For Breathed (A Wish for Wings That Work; Goodnight Opus), 'tis the season to be laugh-out-loud funny one page and cause a tiny tear to well in a reader's eye the next. Retelling the autobiographical story that his late father related every Christmas Eve, Breathed introduces a cynical young man (self-named The Red Ranger of Mars) who meets his match in a retired Santa (When Red snaps, "They say you're Santa Claus," the old man retorts that Santa is "a foolish story for small children. He's a big jolly bribe to control their criminal instincts"). Breathed's hallucinatory artwork is as wondrous and as unpredictable as his tale. Reaffirming a reader's belief in the spirit that is Santa, this could become a perennial seller. All ages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Breathed, creator of the popular ``Bloom County'' comic strip, writes of the transformation of a sour-faced little boy (Breathed's father) during the Depression. In 1939, Red Breathed is a nine-year-old cynic who has been disappointed too many times by the adults in his life to take them seriously. When he meets a retired, aging Santa Claus, he has no expectations. But Santa gains Red's conditional trust with a small miracle only to fail him in a big one--getting Red an Official Buck Tweed Two-Speed Crime-Stopper Star- Hopper bicycle. When he doesn't find his bicycle on Christmas morning, Red goes to bawl out Santa but finds that he can't disappoint the old man by telling him the truth. He ends up comforting him instead, and when Red goes home he discovers that Santa had come through for him--in a way- -after all. Breathed's drawings are at their comic best. If the final plot twist hinges on a bad pun, all is forgiven after the last surprise picture. (Picture book. All ages) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 3-5, younger for reading aloud. Spending the Christmas season with his aunt on a "damp little island somewhere off the country's upper left-hand corner," Red discovers that the reclusive, ill, and ancient man living nearby is Santa Claus. Red (short for his hero Buck Tweed, the Red Ranger of Mars) is too jaded to believe in Santa, and yet when the Santa asks him to believe, he tries. On Christmas morning, hoping against hope for his heart's desire, a Buck Tweed bicycle, Red finds instead a treasure unlooked for, within himself. While Breathed, author/artist of the cartoon strip "Bloom County," often seems to look over the heads of children to wink at the adults in the audience, there's enough that's childlike to keep kids involved, whether its the reassuring homeliness of the hero or his wholehearted longing for the bicycle. The extraordinary, full-color illustrations seem three-dimensional and will intrigue children and adults alike. A most original Christmas book. Carolyn Phelan