A real-life, triumphant horse story worth telling to children, but this attempt falls a bit flat.
A picture-book adaptation of Letts’ nonfiction bestseller, The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, The Horse That Inspired a Nation (2012).
Snowman's story is well known: Saved from a slaughterhouse at the last minute when horse-riding instructor Harry de Leyer purchased him for $80, the gaunt, bedraggled horse didn't fit in at the school for girls where de Leyer taught. But after being sold to a boy living several miles away, the horse repeatedly jumped tall pasture fences to return to what he thought of as home. De Leyer bought him back and trained him; within two years, Snowman was a show-jumping champion. This picture book will be equally appealing to children and adults. Harren's action-packed illustrations, some based on iconic photographs of Snowman, serve it well. However, presumably in an effort to make the story more child-friendly, Letts moves the point of view from de Leyer to his daughter Harriet then back again to de Leyer, a narrative technique that feels clumsy. The book contains some factual inaccuracies: Snowman is described as “old”; the kill man, not de Leyer, brings the horse home to the farm; and de Leyer and his wife are shown as having three children (they had eight). De Leyer and his family are White, as are most background characters. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A real-life, triumphant horse story worth telling to children, but this attempt falls a bit flat. (Nonfiction picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-17385-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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