Pet lovers, especially feline fanciers, will smile at this slice-of-life depiction of indoor cats.
Who says you have to step outdoors to feel the bustle of the city?
Three indoor cats named Nori, Yeti, and Flo fill their day with ordinary fun in a two-story loft apartment. Paper cut-out illustrations show the felines with their faces up against the glass, gazing at birds on the sidewalk. Barron also portrays outside scenes from the cats’ indoor viewpoint: racially diverse passersby looking in to wave hello to the cats, dogs on the pavement “do[ing] what dogs do” (i.e., pooping). Nori, Yeti, and Flo play with recently delivered boxes, bury their faces in their food during mealtime, bathe themselves while sprawled on the couch, and chase one another around the plants in the apartment. Upbeat, rhythmic verse sets a lively tone. The layers of paper and mixed media work to color the inside and outside worlds with equal depth and detail. Use of different angles shows the apartment and the outside city through multiple vantage points, from the floor beneath the couch where the trio hide from a delivery person to the elevated view of the city skyline from the upper windows. Readers are left with the sense that though these kitties never set a paw outside, their lives are nevertheless rich and vibrant.
Pet lovers, especially feline fanciers, will smile at this slice-of-life depiction of indoor cats. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781771476034
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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