A bit treacly but wistful and charming.
A lonely baseball superstar finds a new friend and rethinks his priorities.
He’s talented, popular and very rich, but something is missing that he just can’t name. On a visit to the zoo, he is fascinated by a walrus’ antics. He decides to buy it, but he meets with great resistance from the worried zookeepers. He is so determined to demonstrate his ability to care for the walrus that he completely reconfigures his huge backyard with all the accouterments a walrus could possibly need. He’s ecstatic when the zoo authorities finally agree to let the walrus go. He grooms the walrus, reads him stories and even plays catch. He is so happy that he quits baseball, but eventually he runs out of money and the walrus must go. Of course there’s a happy ending, and the two friends are reunited. It’s not really a baseball story, for the unnamed hero could just as well be a rock star or actor or business mogul. The important part is that he gives it all up for friendship and companionship. Loory builds the tale nicely with sympathetic portrayals of the hero’s loneliness and the walrus’ endearing traits. Young readers will find it all sweetly believable. Latimer’s computer-enhanced cartoons carefully follow the text and add an extra touch to the characters’ emotions. The denouement could come straight out of Field of Dreams, if that film were set in a zoo.
A bit treacly but wistful and charming. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3951-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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
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