Nicely connecting the child to the natural world, this would be a useful opener for a unit about animals as well as a title...
Just like human children, animal babies from chicks to bear cubs learn lessons from adults around them.
Spread by spread, the conversational text of this instructive title presents skills a dozen different young animals have to learn and connects them to readers. Two paragraphs describe the learning task: finding what’s good to eat; learning to swim, defend, feed and shelter oneself; learning to recognize and make particular sounds. Questions to readers follow. “Who sings to you?” the narrator asks after presenting information on penguins. Some shared skills may surprise. It takes time for elephants to learn to use their trunks for drinking, just as it does for children to learn to drink from a water fountain. Great apes learn tool use: Chimps crack nuts with stones, and orangutans gather leafy branches for umbrellas. Hudson’s realistic pen-and-watercolor illustrations show animal parents and their child or children in their natural environments. (The leafy endpapers are less relevant, showing an unlikely collection of unmentioned though recognizable birds and a few animals, some placed so far toward the edges they will likely be hidden by the cover flaps.) A final spread offers two to four additional interesting facts about each of the creatures described.
Nicely connecting the child to the natural world, this would be a useful opener for a unit about animals as well as a title to share with young animal lovers. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60905-391-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Apple
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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