Plan a fruit-buying scavenger hunt after reading this one—even picky eaters are sure to be tempted.
Sayre follows up her salute to vegetables (Rah, Rah, Radishes!, 2011) with this rousing chant in favor of fruit.
“Rah, rah, raspberries! / Go, go, grapes! / Savor the flavors. / Find fruity shapes!” With these staccato rhythms and cheerleading words, Sayre sets the stage for one long chant that will have kids clamoring for a fruit snack. Going well beyond (but including) the standard apple, orange, banana, grapes and berries, she entices readers with such exotics as tamarillo, kiwano, guava, rambutan, currant, durian and the wonderfully named dragon fruit. In piles, baskets and boxes brimming with fruit, Sayre shows off the colors and textures, yet she does not shy away from depicting even those specimens that are not completely perfect. Several fruits are cut to show off their insides, such as the seeds of the kiwi and pomegranate and the intriguing cross sections of a lychee and mangosteen (readers may find themselves wondering which parts of these are edible). Taken primarily at farmer’s markets, mom-and-pop stores and fruit stands and often including hand-lettered signs proclaiming their farm of origin, her photographs send a subtle message to support local farmers and businesses. “Shapes. Textures. Colors. Smells. Fruit is art you can eat!” she marvels in an afterword. Ah, would that readers could pluck Sayre’s art right off the page and savor its juiciness.
Plan a fruit-buying scavenger hunt after reading this one—even picky eaters are sure to be tempted. (Nonfiction picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3390-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated.
Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault’s classic alphabet book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989) gets the Halloween treatment.
Chung follows the original formula to the letter. In alphabetical order, each letter climbs to the top of a tree. They are knocked back to the ground in a jumble before climbing up in sequence again. In homage to the spooky holiday theme, they scale a “creaky old tree,” and a ghostly jump scare causes the pileup. The chunky, colorful art is instantly recognizable. The charmingly costumed letters (“H swings a tail. / I wears a patch. J and K don / bows that don’t match”) are set against a dark backdrop, framed by pages with orange or purple borders. The spreads feature spiderwebs and jack-o’-lanterns. The familiar rhyme cadence is marred by the occasional clunky or awkward phrase; in particular, the adapted refrain of “Chicka chicka tricka treat” offers tongue-twisting fun, but it’s repeatedly followed by the disappointing half-rhyme “Everybody sneaka sneak.” Even this odd construction feels shoehorned into place, since “sneaking” makes little sense when every character in the book is climbing together. The final line of the book ends on a more satisfying note, with “Everybody—time to eat!”
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781665954785
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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