An ebullient book with catchy, rhyming text that’s fun to read again and again at home, in the classroom or under a tree.
Poet Williams interprets the concept of opposites in a clever, rhyming book celebrating the outdoors.
Children revel in opposites as they jump in a pond, enjoy a picnic or run with a kite, all with a rollicking band of animals in tow. Williams contrasts everything from actions (kids “stop” under a tree to wait out a storm, while two girls “go!” to run away from it) to emotions (“I can be happy, or I can be sad”) and more complex concepts like “high” (a girl swings in a tree) and “low” (a boy and a girl crawl through bushes). Author and illustrator also create a delightful visual rhythm between text and pictures as one page eases into the next. “I can whisper,” says one girl to another as they spy a buck in the distance; its opposite appears with the page turn: “or I can… / SHOUT!” scream a boy and girl as they sprint from a snorting bull. Oldfield’s use of bright and sunny colors complements the multiethnic cast, drawing in the most diverse of readers. Sprawled across double-page spreads, her cheery illustrations adeptly showcase both a child’s delight at being licked by a dog and the vibrant yellows of a sunflower’s petals. (An enclosed CD with the text performed by the Flannery Brothers was not available for review.)
An ebullient book with catchy, rhyming text that’s fun to read again and again at home, in the classroom or under a tree. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78285-094-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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