Unsuitable for school or public library shelves but giftworthy starter kits for budding Braques and preschool Pollocks.
Nine prepared scratchboards packaged with a wooden stylus offer invitations to reveal a thematic set of artist’s scenes or, with selective scraping, add customized shapes and patterns to each.
Beneath a layer of removable black into which the outlines of hummingbirds, orchids, leopards, and other jungle flora and fauna are drawn as guidelines, Mirtalipova’s stylized pictures shimmer with pattern and color—which children can see for themselves by mechanically removing the entire layer or, if they so choose, alter (in limited ways) by scraping lines, spots, or stripes of their own. The pencil-shaped stylus, pointed at one end and chisel-ended at the other, comes in a reusable plastic cradle and definitely merits the cautionary hazard notices on the front and back covers. Like the co-published Enchanted Garden (and the other entries in this series), opposite each picture is a set of instructions that mix visual and verbal hints (some in rhyme: “What else is there for you to see? / A lizard climbing up the tree…”) that are capped at the end with an invitation to regard the illustrations as “your own work of art.” Fair enough, though they are really more like cooperative ventures.
Unsuitable for school or public library shelves but giftworthy starter kits for budding Braques and preschool Pollocks. (Novelty. 4-8)Pub Date: July 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78603-141-9
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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