Reviews
Review By Chapter and Verse website
Before the day is out, Pecorino will furmuzzle a man with a long mustache, wamboodle himself down into a tuba, and cause the most Brobdingnagian blast of a note that anyone has ever heard. It’s all in a day’s work for Pecorino.
How does one even begin to describe the best things about the story of the silliest boy in the world and one of his silly adventures?
Perhaps the best way to explain what is so great about Pecorino’s First Concert is to avoid bothering with the details of its most obvious appeal altogether—that being the simple fact that a book about the silliest boy in the world is likely by its very nature to be amusing, which this story most definitely is—and focus on its additional, less predictable benefits.
For one thing, aside from the funny bits of the narrative itself, author Alan Madison has a wonderful way with language, using interesting words (both real and invented) and descriptive phrases in a manner that gives the story the sort of depth and texture that is difficult to describe but makes for a captivating reading experience.
Another nice surprise is the artwork. AnnaLaura Cantone’s illustrations are distinctive and offbeat—colourful, childlike, wildly exaggerated, and (best of all) brimming with a feeling of movement that carries you through the story without ever slowing the flow of its hilarity.
Pecorino’s First Concert is a special book, one of those few whose elements all come together to create something more than just a story. This is the sort of book that becomes a childhood favourite, and that adults and children can enjoy together again and again.
Review By Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature)
Pecorino Sasquatch is considered the silliest boy in the world. Arriving early at a concert conducted by the famous Vittorio Pimplelini, Pecorino thinks he hears the instruments on stage calling to him. He pats the drum, plucks the cello, but cannot get a sound from the tuba. Searching inside, he falls in and gets stuck there. His mother, back from the Ladies' Room, calls him in vain. The concert begins. When the tuba is supposed to play, no sound comes out until, with an enormous blow from the tuba player, Pecorino is blasted out into the air—straight into his mother's arms. Humor and word play, from "furmuzzle" and "wamboodle" to the sounds Pecorino makes with the instruments, pervade the lightweight tale. But the wild illustrations on double pages take us beyond the surreal. Characters have large, sausage-like noses, bulky bodies, tiny feet, and ping-pong ball eyes. Mixed media combine with scratchy fine-line drawings and varied typefaces to create dramatic but humorous situations that refuse to be still. Perhaps in a new adventure we will find out what the strange pet with the furry striped tail keeping Pecorino company is.
From School Library Journal
Young Pecorino makes his first trip to a city concert with his mother and is fascinated with instruments of the orchestra. Entranced by the siren call of unmanned instruments on the empty stage, Pecorino explores the workings of the tuba a bit too deeply. Despite his attempts to wiggle, wossle, and wamboodle himself out, he is trapped. This entertainingly silly tale is further enhanced by a larger-than-life guest conductor and a perplexed and furmuzzled tubist–capable of a Brobdingnagian blow on his instrument. Cantone's mixed-media pen-and-paint illustrations of large-nosed, expansive cartoon figures add whimsy to descriptive text filled with nonsensical words and the thoughtful logic of a child. This quirky musical adventure will be a hit with young audiences. –Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TX Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.