Keen and clever with a knack for clear instruction.
Alphabet-letter magnets come to life to explore how the letters C and K share the same sound.
When the refrigerator magnets decide to tell a story, C and K offer up a variety of possible protagonists: cat or kitten, crab or koala, clown or kangaroo, and so on. Each potential character is depicted in a childlike crayon drawing, affixed to the refrigerator’s blue surface with the appropriate letter magnets, all of whom have remarkably expressive eyes. Suddenly K accuses C of theft. “Everybody knows the K sound is my sound. Every time you start one of my K words, you just CONFUSE everybody!” C suggests they share the sound, but K retorts that C keeps “taking all the good words!…Like CASTLE and CLOUDS!” The argument continues until they storm off to separate sides of the refrigerator, refusing to stand next to each other. This concerns the other letters, who point out that if C and K won’t stand together “there wouldn’t be any SMOCKS or BLOCKS! No STICKS or LICKS! No ROCKETS or POCKETS or PICKLES!” Indeed, “the world would be quite out of LUCK.” These nightmare scenarios are depicted with letters arranged to form the incomplete words in an effective demonstration of phonemic principles. The clever letters even address the concept of a silent K when followed by an N, as in in the word “knight.”
Keen and clever with a knack for clear instruction. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-34880-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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