This dead-bird story with a happy ending rewards children’s optimism
When Johnny and Grandma come home one day from shopping, Johnny spies something near the roadside ditch.
They pull over and discover it is a pheasant with beautiful feathers. Johnny says it’s sleeping; Grandma notes that it’s “still soft.” Johnny says he’ll make a nest and care for it. Grandma suspects that it has been run over by a car and says she could use its feathers in her crafting, but Johnny rejoins, “Silly Grandma, he’s not ready for craftwork, he’s sleeping.” As they are putting the pheasant in the trunk of the car, Johnny mimics its cry, saying, “Hoot! Hoot!” After settling the pheasant at home in the box, the pheasant awakens. Confused, it flies and lands on top of Grandma’s head—much to her surprise—and then escapes out of a window. Before it returns to the wild (Johnny accuses Grandma of scaring it away with talk of crafting), the pheasant leaves behind a surprise for Johnny. Minnema (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) maintains a deft balance of perspective between generations in this quietly funny tale. Both Johnny’s enthusiasm and optimism and Grandma’s pragmatism are fully believable—any child who has found a dead or injured animal will relate. Flett’s (Cree-Métis) characteristically spare illustrations depict this tender relationship, careful details such as Grandma’s game of solitaire further developing these loving Indigenous characters.
This dead-bird story with a happy ending rewards children’s optimism . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0501-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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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