A wandering effort, happy but pointless.
The perfect book for kids who love dragons and mild tacos.
Rubin’s story starts with an incantatory edge: “Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well.” The playing field is set: dragons, tacos. As a pairing, they are fairly silly, and when the kicker comes in—that dragons hate spicy salsa, which ignites their inner fireworks—the silliness is sillier still. Second nature, after all, is for dragons to blow flames out their noses. So when the kid throws a taco party for the dragons, it seems a weak device that the clearly labeled “totally mild” salsa comes with spicy jalapenos in the fine print, prompting the dragons to burn down the house, resulting in a barn-raising at which more tacos are served. Harmless, but if there is a parable hidden in the dragon-taco tale, it is hidden in the unlit deep, and as a measure of lunacy, bridled or unbridled, it doesn’t make the leap into the outer reaches of imagination. Salmieri’s artwork is fitting, with a crabbed, ethereal line work reminiscent of Peter Sís, but the story does not offer it enough range.
A wandering effort, happy but pointless. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3680-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Out in time for the chilliest season, this offers a solution to winter blues while adding to the growing list of yeti...
When the winter gets rough, what is a yeti to do?
Readers follow a nameless yeti accompanied by a stuffed toy yeti in a simple narrative. Yetis love several things about winter: waking up to quiet, snowy mornings, drinking hot chocolate, sliding down hills, building snow castles, frolicking in the snow and pretending to be Godzilla, ice-skating “Yeti style” (belly down). Nevertheless, it isn’t entirely grand for yetis in the winter, for they, too, experience winter blues, when hot-chocolate supplies have been depleted and their cold, wet fur won’t dry. And so they miss the warm summer: playing outdoors for long hours, looking for sea creatures, producing sea-monster beauty contests, building sand castles, and zipping down splashy slides, also yeti-style. They miss the summer nights and listening to the sound of crickets, wishing on shooting stars, and gazing at the hundreds of fireflies. Vogel, in his debut as both author and illustrator, contrasts the white, gray, barren winter spreads with lively green backyards, sunny beach days, and blue summer nights. The yeti’s expressions merit great attention, as do the nod to a yeti-fied version of a Sendak classic and such important scene-setting details as the radiators found in cold-weather homes.
Out in time for the chilliest season, this offers a solution to winter blues while adding to the growing list of yeti protagonists. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4170-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Most young readers, even those in diapers, would agree.
As if the fiery disaster of the first outing (2012) weren’t bad enough, news that the world’s entire supply of tacos has been used up leaves not just the dragons dismayed.
Fortunately, there’s a time machine in the garage, so it might be possible to bring new seed stock for taco trees (didn’t you know?) from the past. Unfortunately, said device is hard to calibrate— first they undershoot back to the previous volume’s spicy-salsa–fueled holocaust and then overshoot to a similar catastrophe in prehistoric times. Subsequent ventures into alternate space-time continua lead to universes where dragons love…diapers (“That’s not right”), and tacos chow down on dragons (“Weird, but closer!”). Then, when the chunky white lad leading the draconic expedition does finally get it right, only the taco in his lap survives the trip back to the present. That’s enough for a happy ending, though, as Salmieri shows in the last of his naïve-style cartoon scenes with a taco party in which dragons and diversely hued figures (some recognizable) from various historical and fantasy realms mingle. “After all,” as Rubin puts it, “dragons love diapers. I mean, tacos. Dragons love tacos. / Heck, everyone loves tacos.”
Most young readers, even those in diapers, would agree. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-42888-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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