Playful design contributes to the success of this warmhearted book.
A playful story about familial pride and unconditional love.
An anthropomorphic dog in a tweed sports coat tells his child, who wears a sweater and a cap, about family members as they look at a family portrait gallery. Each spread with a portrait has the father recounting a great accomplishment on a turquoise-backgrounded verso. Then the recto opens as a gatefold to reveal a picture of the relative that humorously undermines that account. For example, a uniformed bulldog was “the pride of the police,” but the underlying gatefold illustration reveals the police dog to be oblivious to three black-clad robber dogs absconding with their loot behind him. The child, presumably unaware of those contradictory backstories, interjects to ask, “What about me?” The father responds with the titular phrase: “You will be a GREAT dog!” In the final exchange, however, the father amends his statement in a concluding gatefold that finds the cap falling off to reveal cat ears. “You will be a great dog, a magnificent dog… / Or a great CAT. It’s up to you!” The message of unconditional love reveals the father as a great dad, but readers may wonder why the child was concealing their feline self until this moment. The illustrations feature a strong sense of line and pattern, with hints of turquoise, gold, and brown popping against white backgrounds.
Playful design contributes to the success of this warmhearted book. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-91917-0
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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BOOK REVIEW
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