Clean of look, seamless in design: a delight even for the diapered crowd.
The Picasso of paper engineers (One Red Dot, 2005, etc.) displays a dab hand at concocting even more thoroughly interactive explorations of shape and color for touchscreens.
At a genial narrator’s invitation (followed by a hearty “Good Job!” after each successful poke), children spot and touch ten dots, each a different color, on as many screens. Said dots are concealed with increasing sophistication, from easy-peasy early ones placed on a checkered background or, Concentration style, under opaque covers. More difficult screens feature of movable “spotlight” illuminating shapes behind a black screen and tumbling arrays of circles, squares, stars and hearts of various size and hue. Spying the final, white, dot in a dazzling multi-screen maze of geometric forms will challenge the sharpest eyes, and should probably not be attempted by the easily irritated. The graphics are bright and simple, the pace is entirely controlled by the viewer, all of the dots will be in different places on subsequent visits to their respective pages, and all can also be hunted down in any order.
Clean of look, seamless in design: a delight even for the diapered crowd. (iPad game app. 1-6)Pub Date: May 25, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ruckus Mobile Media
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Cute and sprightly but not a standout.
Deck the stalls?
A bevy of barnyard animals, a cat, and some dogs get fully into the Christmas spirit by sprucing up the farm with colorful decorations, including holly berries and sparkling baubles. They have a great time and sing while going about their merry chores in a manner somewhat in keeping with the rhythm of the classic tune “Deck the Halls.” (In fact, a flock of sheep are shown holding song sheets for it.) As might be expected with these particular celebrants, some of the familiar lyrics are altered just a bit; for instance, “boughs of holly” is “translated” as “cows and holly.” Adult readers expecting the rhythm here to work exactly as it does in the original will be disappointed, because it doesn’t—it’s clunky. This is merely a brief, lightweight spoof of the familiar ditty, so it’s recommended that grown-ups read rather than sing this—except for that final line!—to very young targeted audiences, who may be unfamiliar with the actual song anyway. Some fun is still to be had in the illustrations, however. The spirited, wittily expressive animal characters are depicted having a fine time romping about and producing a variety of onomatopoeic sounds throughout. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Cute and sprightly but not a standout. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66591-435-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Boynton Bookworks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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