Check out this super cool article on AliasWavefront's website (the makers of Maya, the software used for the book).
Here's a nifty review that the book got from The Midwest Book Review.
Written and illustrated as a collaboration between Bryan Ballinger and Keith
Lango, The Great Cheese Squeeze: A Gruntly & Iggy Adventure is a remarkable and
very highly recommended children's picture book about Gruntly, a prairie mouse
with a passion for sculpting "cheese toes", and Iggy, his froggy friend. This
gentle tale about the power of cooperation is wonderfully brought to life with
color illustrations that appear like photographs of incredible,
three-dimensional sculpted and crafted scenes of the wacky characters and their
world. The Great Cheese Squeeze is a treat for the eyes, as well as an engaging
and original story for young readers.
And here's a great review from BookReview.com
| A Gruntly
& Iggy Adventure
Two is better than one! That's the moral of the story and a good moral for kids to learn. Teamwork. This is a very odd story is told in an incredibly original way. Mr. Gruntly Fromage and the Reverend Ignatious P. Bubblesmog (great names!) live in a light house and sell their crafts to tourists: sculptures of cheese made by Gruntly and wind chimes made of buggy bits created by Iggy. Gruntly must come up with an original idea for a new sculpture that he wants to submit to the Prairie Cheese Carver's contest. This is where Iggy's help comes in, but in a very round-about way. The prose flows wonderfully off of the tongue. Adults will love reading this one out loud to the kids, even if the kids question what some of those words mean. The wonderfully rendered 3-D graphics will be sure to catch the kids' eyes as well. This is certainly a book your kids will be begging to have you read to them over and over. And you won't even mind! |
A wonderful review from
Edutaining Kids
Stories featuring "odd couples" can be fun for kids.
Children enjoy the contrasting characters of these special friendships and learn
lessons about the value of teamwork. This new book about Gruntly, an artistic
little mouse, and Iggy, his frog friend who is a country preacher, is
wonderfully quirky and rich. These friends share a common interest in
craft-making, although their subjects are different indeed. Gruntly has a
penchant for creating cheese sculptures of toes, while Iggy uses his insect
leftovers to build wind chimes. While Gruntly is trying to come up with an original new idea for his entry
in the upcoming Prairie Cheese Carvers' Contest, Iggy is
looking for a way to handle his very smelly socks. A string of events ties these
two independent quests together in hilarious ways--and towards a very satisfying
conclusion. The computer-generated 3D illustrations are delightfully intriguing, and
the story is infused with the perfect amount of quirkiness and charm to appeal
to both kids and their parents. This is a fantastic book for caregivers and
children to share together. Co-written and co-illustrated by Bryan Ballinger and Keith Lango, both
members of the Big Idea Productions (VeggieTales) team. This hardcover edition
is approximately $14.99 US.
Here's a review from Christian Parenting Magazine.
The first in a new series from Big Idea (the VeggieTales people), this silly book features absolutely no vegetables. Instead, you'll meet a mouse named Gruntly and his frog friend Iggy who live together in their lighthouse on the prairie—that's right, a lighthouse. That set up alone should clue you in that this is a story unlike anything you've ever read before.
Gruntly, it seems, has a thing for toes and cheese sculptures. Iggy crafts wind chimes from insect parts. But their docile lives are interrupted when Gruntly makes plans to enter the Prairie Cheese Carvers' Contest. The result is far too complicated to explain here, but suffice it to say that it involves smelly socks, hot dogs, and something called a Decheesinator.
Amid all this wackiness is a solid message of friendship and Christian brotherhood. Despite their quirks, Gruntly and Iggy discover that together, they can accomplish great things.
There's some cool reviews up on Amazon too, click here to read them.