  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 02/01/2010 Rhyming verse in this Australian import chronicles stubborn little Ella’s refusal to trim her cascading, intertwining, curly locks. There’s a sprinkling of mama trauma throughout, as Ella’s mother chases her down with hairbrush in hand, pleading with her daughter and, in one scene, collapsing on a sofa in exhaustion, that adds a fair dose of humor to the encounter. Young listeners will also no doubt notice that as the story progresses, Ella’s hair grows and grows, so that by the end of the tale, her hair has absolutely taken over everything. Ella then realizes what she’s wrought (“Mother, this hair must be stopped!”); Mother responds with a trip to the salon, where a team of hairdressers tame the beast and leave Ella with a much simpler, shorter haircut and a much improved mother-daughter relationship. While the solution’s a little implausible, curly hair wise, Fox’s story is a whole lot of fun, what with its jaunty cadence and relatable theme of a child’s determined independence. The line-and-watercolor illustrations mirror the playfulness of the story, depicting Ella as a carefree, happy girl with a big and ever-increasing mop of brunette locks. The palette has a jelly-bean sweetness, but the swift and focused scribbles of Plecas’ linework keeps things from becoming saccharine. Even listeners with relatively tame coifs will understand the thrill of resisting adult insistence, and the brushable and unbrushable alike will happily follow the antics of the indomitable Ella. HM - Copyright 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. School Library Journal - 02/01/2010 PreS-Gr 2— Books with very limited and inconsequential subjects—such as hair care—run the risk of irrelevance. But this one dances around that particular trap with a bouncy, rhymed text and a plot that, while thin, is entertaining, especially when paired with Plecas's cheery, silly illustrations. Ella Kazoo is first pictured as a stubborn moppet with a white poodle pal and shoulder-length curls. "She hides in the cupboard and under the stair. She roars at her mom like a big growly bear. She whines and she moans and she howls in despair, but Ella Kazoo will not brush her hair." Plecas makes great use of the space on each page to highlight the child's mood, shadowing her in menacing purple when she's roaring, engulfing her in a mustard-yellow cloud during a tantrum, and surrounding her with cheerful pastel settings when she's doing whatever it is she'd rather do than brush her hair. Readers will notice that on every page her hair is longer, more tangled, and more inhabited by sticky things. Ella looks happy enough floating in the bathtub with hair down to her feet, but on the following page, her friends grimace in disgust. It's great fun to see what has to happen before Ella Kazoo decides that something must be done about her unruly mane. Young readers just might get the message that holding their ground in a battle with mom may not always be in their own best interest.—Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY - Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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