Fetching tips for personal and domestic harmony.
Chip the dog offers further important guidance for readers of all species to chew on.
Like life, “dogness can be complicated.” So, Chip observes, it’s vital to have a “special someone” with whom to share one’s hopes and dreams—in this case, a purple plush bunny companion named Mr. Cuddles. While it’s OK to lose balls or bones, which can be replaced, the bunny’s disappearance touches off a histrionic descent into guilt and despair. And no, a replacement plushie offered by Chip’s olive-skinned human family won’t butter the biscuit. “Ignore ALL my advice!” the despairing doggy wails, referencing Petty and Boldt’s previous installments in the series. “Eat bees, eat fire, trust cats. Just don’t lose Mr. Cuddles!” Readers will feel for this devastated, drooping pooch, at least until anguish gives way to suspicion when a household search turns up a trail of kitty treat crumbs and unfurled toilet paper. Could the culprit be a certain…cat? Uh-oh. That the ensuing denouement leads not to violence but to a glad reunion and a cozy general snuggle suggests that Chip is a worthy model for conflict resolution while testifying to the fact that our hero really is a “smart dog.”
Fetching tips for personal and domestic harmony. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593900758
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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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