Vultures may seem an unlikely subject for a literary celebration, but this playful, brief poem and accompanying collages serve as a pleasing celebration. From ascent on morning thermals through a day of scavenging to rest at night, the vultures’ routine unfolds on the page. Page turns lead readers along the vultures’ search for “foods that . . . / REEK! / Those fragrant flowers? No, no. / That spicy smoke? No, no. That stinky dead deer? Yes, yes! / Vultures like a mess. They land and dine. Rotten is fine.” Sayre’s text is positively gleeful in its exposure of the previously unacceptable subject matter to a child audience, depicting vultures not as cartoon villains but as a necessary part of nature. Jenkins’s textured collages reveal unapologetically ugly vultures against a breathtakingly clean blue sky, almost chortling as they juxtapose lovely blossoms with the decomposing deer carcass. A two-page appendix gives readers a chance to “Get to Know Vultures” and provides a more thorough context for the preceding fun. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8050-7557-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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