A cozy pleaser, especially for the author’s fans and collectors.
The classic holiday poem, cut to fit, updated to suit modern sensibilities, and presented with a cast of small animals.
Actually, considering that in the original, Santa rode a “miniature sleigh” (here, an extravagantly decorated ice skate), there’s a certain logic to replacing the human family of her 2002 version of the poem with mice, transforming the reindeer into cardinals, and depicting the “jolly old elf” as a raccoon. Though the liberties Engelbreit takes with the text to accommodate these changes are relatively minor (“And then in a twinkling on the roof I heard / The prancing and pawing of each little bird”), dropping whole lines (“More rapid than eagles…” “As dry leaves…”), dressing Santa in velvet rather than fur, and having him suck not on a pipe but a peppermint stick (so “holly leaves,” not smoke, “encircled his head like a wreath”) justifiably account for the altered title. But what are elisions and distortions to audiences who delight in luxuriantly detailed domestic scenes strewn with antique toys, sweets, and dancing lines of block-lettered verse? For literary purists, there are alternative editions aplenty. (This book was digitally reviewed.)
A cozy pleaser, especially for the author’s fans and collectors. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-296933-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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