A gift for the nature shelf.
With patience and persistence, Franny befriends a crow.
Franny’s father calls her a “featherhead,” but what she’s paying attention to is the natural world. Savage, who has written extensively about nature for adult audiences, both tells and shows us an antidote to Richard Louv’s “nature-deficit disorder” in this satisfying picture book. Her nature-loving protagonist leaves a mess inside but finds endless entertainment out of doors. Seated on a rock with her sandwich, she drops crumbs that attract a crow. The next day she purposefully brings food, and soon the crow begins to bring her small gifts. Eventually, her father recognizes that the crow is not imaginary; their friendship is real. The illustrations celebrate the wonders nature offers this resourceful protagonist, especially in a spread illustrating “a dozen different ways to pass the time while she waited” for the crow to appear—climbing trees, swinging on a tire swing, reading in a hammock, looking through binoculars, drawing, making a daisy chain, even helpfully trimming a bush. O’Byrne’s illustrations show an appealingly freckle-faced white girl living with an indulgent, if distracted, father, also white. These images are relatively flat and childlike, and the effect is very child friendly. In an afterword, the writer tells readers a bit more about crows and poses an unanswered question: “Do they actually like or love their human helpers?”
A gift for the nature shelf. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77164-444-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Greystone Kids
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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