Suggests a human lesson from a fish fact made familiar by a popular children’s film.
Even someone socially awkward can find a friend.
A habit of stinging keeps lonely Anemone from making friends, but for a clownfish, Anemone is just the right companion. Illustrated by the narrative and summarized on the last page of this tale of anthropomorphized sea creatures are three facts about ocean life: Tides rise and fall; hermit crabs use other creatures’ shells for protection, upgrading as they grow; and clownfish and sea anemones have a symbiotic relationship. (The last fact will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Disney’s Finding Nemo.) Anemone’s social difficulties become evident when three small fish wash into its pool during high tide. They know to stay away from its offers of friendship, but the tide goes out, the pool shrinks, and they can’t help but touch Anemone and be stung. “Why do I always sting everyone?” Anemone wonders. But it turns out that stinging can be helpful. When Clownfish is chased into Anemone’s sheltering tentacles by a threatening octopus, it’s the octopus that gets the sting. McGregor’s illustrations have the appearance of having been done with oil pastels. Anemone is a bright pink. The small fish are striped with shades of turquoise and Day-Glo green. The octopus looms large and gray. Attentive readers will be intrigued by the side story of a hermit crab looking for a new home that is enacted along the sandy edges of the main narrative.
Suggests a human lesson from a fish fact made familiar by a popular children’s film. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950354-51-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scribble
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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