More exhausting than entertaining.
Animals in trouble? Who you gonna call? Rescue Rabbits!
Ace, Chip, Dot, and Spot are the Rescue Rabbits. From Rescue Rabbit Headquarters, they use their high-tech gadgets and machines as well as their smarts to rescue animals of all species. They lift Edgar Elephant with their Rescue Rabbits Super-Excavator in order to extract a thorn from his foot. They block traffic with their Rescue Rabbits Limo to allow the Duckling family to cross the street. But their big rescue of the day begins with a call on their Special-Ops Telephone: Prince Rex the Rhino is stuck up a tree with ants in his pants and chopsticks up his nose. When they locate him, the ants and the chopsticks are easy to take care of, but getting him out of the tree proves difficult. He won’t use a ladder or a rope. The Rescue Rabbits bring in Queen Rex, who scares her kid out of the tree and promptly forgives him for using her chopsticks to free her ants from her ant farm. Seltzer’s text unfolds in a combination of speech bubbles and narrative text with tech-words highlighted in red. The perfusion of technobabble does not hide the fact that the story itself is forced. Garrigue’s Richard Scarry–esque cartoons also try too hard, and the combo makes less sense that it ought.
More exhausting than entertaining. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4263-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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