Spinky Sulks

Reads like a transcript from an eight-year-old sulker's head.

Author: William Steig Illustrator: William Steig Pages: 32 Publisher: Sunburst Published Date: 01/01/2000 Genre: Fiction - Family Life PB Price: $6.95 Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: Ages 4-8 Read Aloud: 4+ Read Alone: 6+

Common Sense Note

This story reads like a transcript from an eight-year-old sulker's head (a really funny eight-year-old with the rough-hewn eloquence of Abe Lincoln), and the illustrations are lovely and as slick as a whistle.

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Peter Lewis

Spinky is in what can only be described as a delicious sulk--one a mile wide and deep as a rich man's pockets. He'll teach them that he's "a person with his own private thoughts and feelings, which they couldn't begin to appreciate." Sentiments echoed by one eight-year-old, who concisely sympathized: "Been there."

Steig catches everything right: the syntax, the feelings, the expressions on the faces of the Spinkster and those trying to deprogram his funk. The look on his face when his pals--two cronies who had nothing to do with what sent him into his sulk, whatever that was, really--come to cheer him up is positively murderous.

And though the artwork will steal your heart, it is the words that are spot-on and memorable: "His favorite grandma just happened to stop by with some of his favorite candy. She gave him a big fat hug, but Spinky went limp in her arms. After all, she still belonged to the human race, for which he no longer had any use."

Check out Steig's Caleb and Kate and Yellow and Pink, as well as Janice May Udry and Maurice Sendak's Let's Be Enemies.

Plot Summary:

Spinky gives a command performance--the sulk to end all sulks--in this tip of the hat to children's feelings from William Steig. What's a kid to do when his pride is trifled with? No sister of his is gonna call him Stinky, and Philadelphia is too the capital of Belgium. Spinky plays his funk like a maestro.

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