STEAM-y early-reader fun.
This early reader has a resourceful elephant girl at its center.
The story follows the same characters introduced in McCully’s 3, 2, 1, Go! (2015), in which the protagonist builds a catapult. Here Min, an anthropomorphic elephant child, wants to play, but her friends, Bess and Ann (also elephants), are too hot to join her. First Min tries to cool them off with a leafy branch she calls a fan, which she waves with her trunk. This doesn’t work, and so she goes in search of water to fill an emptied, abandoned swimming pool. Undeterred when the only water to be found is at the bottom of a deep well, she coils a long hose around a pipe and secures it with some glue to build the eponymous “machine” that draws water from the well to the conveniently located swimming pool. The story, which is dedicated to “all problem-solving girls,” concludes with the friends joyfully splashing in the pool. Unfortunately, nowhere is the device Min builds identified as an Archimedes screw, which seems like an oversight since even a brief front- or backmatter explanation would enrich the book as a whole. But, the controlled text and lively watercolor illustrations will engage young readers learning to independently decode text and just might inspire some to build their own machines, too.
STEAM-y early-reader fun. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3970-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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