A beautiful, quiet, indoor-outdoor family story that will dazzle the eye and warm the heart.
An animal’s-eye view of a typical night on a farm.
As Tessa, a little curly-haired, olive-skinned girl, her father, mother, and baby brother, Sam, progress through an evening, a night, and a morning, their yellow-eyed, marmalade tabby cat sees much that the humans miss. Following each refrain of “only the cat saw...” is a wordless, double-page spread of the cat prowling about: gazing at the sheep from the window; catching fireflies; watching an owl hunt a mouse; and more. After the tabby’s active night, the narrative shifts to Tessa’s perspective for a satisfying ending. Wolff’s spectacularly textured, highly saturated paintings show that cats who wander have lives all their own, independent of their owners. With these new illustrations accompanying a text first published in 1985, Wolff also offers intimate views of this multiracial family that are rarely found in picture books: Readers see Tessa’s head and legs as she sits on the toilet at 2 a.m.; Mother nurses Sam in bed while Father sleeps. Since the book opens with Father hanging laundry on the clothesline while holding baby Sam in a baby carrier and ends with Father feeding Sam while Mother cooks breakfast, it seems that both parents take an equal share in raising the children and caring for the house.
A beautiful, quiet, indoor-outdoor family story that will dazzle the eye and warm the heart. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6692-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end.
Something is preventing Owl from falling asleep.
Owl leans back against his white pillow and headboard. “Squeek!” says something underneath the bed. Owl’s never heard that sound before, so he fastens his pink bathrobe and answers the front door. Nobody. It must be the wind; back to bed. Bidding himself goodnight, he climbs into bed—and hears the noise again. Time after time, he pops out of bed seeking the squeaker. Is it in the cupboard? He empties the shelves. Under the floor? He pulls up his floorboards. As Owl’s actions ratchet up—he destroys the roof and smashes the walls, all in search of the squeak—so does his anxiety. Not until he hunkers down in bed under the night sky (his bed is now outdoors, because the house’s roof and walls are gone), frantically clutching his pillow, does he see what readers have seen all along: a small, gray mouse. In simple illustrations with black outlines, textured coloring, and foreshortened perspective, Pizzoli plays mischievously with mouse placement. Sometimes the mouse is behind Owl or just out of his sightline; other times, the mouse is on a solid, orange-colored page across the spread from Owl, which removes him from Owl’s scene in a rather postmodern manner. Is the mouse toying with Owl? Who knows?
A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-1275-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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