A well-tempered experiment in having your (carrot) cake and eating it too, with a moderate test of forbearance.
Honey Moneybunny returns, this time with tips on how to save money.
After having guided readers on how to Spend It! and Earn It! (2019, 2017), this time young Honey Moneybunny is in need of a sanctuary from her rambunctious little siblings. A house of her own is too ambitious, not to mention she is a tad young to live alone, so she and her father settle on a playhouse. Her father advises her that a playhouse will cost her 10 carrots—carrots being the coin of the realm in Bunnyland—and so it will take her five weeks of saving the two carrots per week she earns taking care of her siblings. But here McLeod introduces a smart alternative to straight saving: saving a portion of each week’s take so that Honey can enjoy some treats from her allowance yet continue to save at the same time, albeit at a slower rate. It is about as painless an introduction to division as one could hope for. To top it off, the story also introduces the act of patience, which is another tough lesson. But Honey is such a charmer, and she goes about her task with such good-natured earnestness—and the language of the book is so consolingly you-can-do-it—that you can’t help but cheer for her to save for her playhouse.
A well-tempered experiment in having your (carrot) cake and eating it too, with a moderate test of forbearance. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-1240-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
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