Not only is Baby Bear’s loss of fear too sudden to be believable, the art pays no mind to his inner emotional landscape and...
Mixed messages and a main character who comes off as less a frightened youngster than a self-absorbed twit spoil Pearson’s debut.
The fault lies chiefly (but not wholly) with the illustrations. Scared by noises in the nighttime woods, Baby Bear slips out of his den. He climbs a tall tree, rips down the starry sky like a curtain and proceeds to eat it. He callously brushes off the protests of a field mouse, a firefly and a bat in his determination to eradicate the night. He loses his fear of the dark when his mother appeals to self-interest by explaining that the dark helps bears survive, too. Despite being capable of pulling down the sky, he is portrayed by Leick not as a powerful figure or, considering his motives, even an anxious one, but as a chubby-cheeked teddy bear who exudes smug self-satisfaction as he continues to chew away despite the pleas of other creatures. Ultimately Baby Bear belches out the sky in what would be a comical climax were it not depicted as a few almost unnoticeable gassy wisps issuing from his mouth and disappearing into the page’s gutter.
Not only is Baby Bear’s loss of fear too sudden to be believable, the art pays no mind to his inner emotional landscape and turns what is essentially a tale of mythic proportions into a cozy bit of feel-good ephemera. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6103-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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