This quiet tale’s beguiling details may well draw even action-oriented children in long enough that they hear its message
A squirrel, a pear, and a violin form the key elements in this unusual story that expresses how music can bring a community together.
When a squirrel finds a pear on the ground, he cuts it in two, eating just half because the whole is too big to eat. So the squirrel makes a violin out of the other half. He begins to play, and the music is so sweet that the animals in the forest stop to listen. The fox leaves off chasing the chicken, and the lion pauses his pursuit of the rabbit. Each predator says, “What beautiful music. Let’s stop and listen,” and even begins to cuddle with his respective prey. Soon the forest is peaceful and quiet, filled with the enchantment of the music. When a seed from the pear falls to the ground, it grows into a huge tree filled with all sizes of pears that the squirrel shares with the animals, even the “teeny tiny beetles,” who make their own cellos, violas, and violins. (What the carnivores decide to eat in this music-filled community goes unexplored.) The brightly colored illustrations have the look of mid-20th-century animation and incorporate small, charming details. Both author and illustrator are Chinese, and the book makes its way to North America via New Zealand. The story is gentle and lacking in dramatic appeal, though the idea of turning a pear into a violin is whimsical, and the peaceable kingdom that results is a winningly depicted one.
This quiet tale’s beguiling details may well draw even action-oriented children in long enough that they hear its message . (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-76036-020-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Starfish Bay
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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