Not Cat’s funniest outing, but readers may get a kick out of imagining what adventures they might have with their own...
Cat is back, a busy schedule of naps interrupted by some substitute teaching when Ms. Melba gets sick. Will Cat survive?
It turns out that missing naps isn’t the worst part—attempts to escape out the window or hide under the desk show that kittens are out of Cat’s comfort zone. But the unseen narrator’s guilt trip about Ms. Melba’s past kindnesses gets the feline moving, albeit reluctantly. But what to do with all those identical-looking kittens? Music? Sure, but when the recorders prove discordant, Cat breaks out an electric guitar, which disturbs the class next door. Building time is more successful, but Cat again goes too far with art time, providing bowls of paint and demonstrating how to dip paws in and make prints on the wall. Uh-oh. Ms. Melba’s back (from the vet, evidently, as she is in an Elizabethan collar that will have pet owners chuckling). In a clean-up worthy of The Cat in the Hat, the kittens pitch in to save the day. And when asked what they learned, they use signs like Cat’s to explain. And Cat? Cat’s learned that kittens aren’t so bad after all. Cat’s droll expressions and signs are highlights, but while amusing, this entry doesn’t rise to the level of predecessors; Cat doesn’t walk that fine line between nasty and nice in the way that readers have come to expect, and the give-and-take with the narrator also isn’t as much fun.
Not Cat’s funniest outing, but readers may get a kick out of imagining what adventures they might have with their own substitute teachers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-53905-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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