A satisfying story of hippo-bird, bird-hippo friendship.
In this sweet-but-sassy British import, Hugo the hippo and Bella the bird announce their intentions to attend the Hippo-Bird (or Bird-Hippo) Fairy-Tale Fancy Dress Party disguised as the Princess and the Pea.
Bella doesn’t want to be the pea to Hugo’s princess, of course (“too green and small”), so she decides she’ll be a mermaid and Hugo will be her rock. Hugo protests that rocks are “too gray and blobby”—despite obvious similarities between him and rocks that Bella isn’t shy to point out. Not long after their bickering ends in a snippy standoff, both separately reconsider…and both end up dressing as peas for the ball. This charming story of compromise is mostly a dialogue rendered in two typefaces, a rounder, more hippo-ish style for Hugo’s voice and a scrappier one for Bella’s. The spare design, a fetching combination of inky black lines and blankets of saturated color, perfectly reflects the comical nature of the friends’ opposing perspectives. Rickerty has fun with color—at one point Bella paints Hugo orange (to be Cinderella’s pumpkin), and the next spread is a cheerful mess of orange hippo tracks and white Bella tracks. The copyright page shows a photograph of a bird and hippo together, a natural phenomenon no doubt inspiring Hugo’s opening line “All hippos have birds, and Bella is mine.”
A satisfying story of hippo-bird, bird-hippo friendship. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3614-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet.
A ghost longs to be scary, but none of the creepy personas she tries on fit.
Misty, a feline ghost with big green eyes and long whiskers, wants to be the frightening presence that her haunted house calls for, but sadly, she’s “too cute to be spooky.” She dons toilet paper to resemble a mummy, attempts to fly on a broom like a witch, and howls at the moon like a werewolf. Nothing works. She heads to a Halloween party dressed reluctantly as herself. When she arrives, her friends’ joyful screams reassure her that she’s great just as she is. Sadler’s message, though a familiar one, is delivered effectively in a charming, ghostly package. Misty truly is too precious to be frightening. Laberis depicts an endearingly spooky, all-animal cast—a frog witch, for instance, and a crocodilian mummy. Misty’s sidekick, a cheery little bat who lends support throughout, might be even more adorable than she is. Though Misty’s haunted house is filled with cobwebs and surrounded by jagged, leafless trees, the charming characters keep things from ever getting too frightening. The images will encourage lingering looks. Clearly, there’s plenty that makes Misty special just as she is—a takeaway that adults sharing the book with their little ones should be sure to drive home.
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593702901
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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