“Yip-yip-yip-yip!” indeed, for this sympathetic portrayal of a not-often-celebrated creature who shares our world.
By the light of the moon, a coyote quietly prowls through a suburban neighborhood, hunting for food for her family.
This simple, lyrical text stresses the senses: Coyote listens, she sniffs, she looks. Short sentences and long pauses, indicated by page turns, mirror the animal's stealthy progress and sudden attacks. Ibatouilline's shadowy paintings enhance the tension. Each detail of fur, feathers, and foliage is clearly delineated, yet almost all the action takes place in the near-dark. Finally, just as the sun comes up, Coyote successfully takes a turkey. Watched through the window by a curly-haired, light-brown–skinned child, the hunter sings, "Yeeeep-yip-yip-yoooo!" Two pages of “Coyote Facts” at the end offer further information about these wolflike predators’ ubiquity and flexibility in food habits and habitat and suggest further reading and websites. The dark illustrations and potentially upsetting subject matter make this title more suited for lap-sharing than storytime, but the author and illustrator have handled the predator-prey encounters sensitively. A striking double-page spread shows the coyote leaping on a mouse—“POUNCE!”—but the mouse escapes. The turkey’s feathers obscure his final moments in the coyote’s mouth. Even collections that include Cheryl Blackford and Laurie Caple’s Hungry Coyote (2015) will want these incredible illustrations.
“Yip-yip-yip-yip!” indeed, for this sympathetic portrayal of a not-often-celebrated creature who shares our world. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62672-041-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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