Child-friendly and appealing.
“Can you be friends with somebody who is…not at all like you?”
This cheerful account of surprising animal friendships assures readers and listeners that they can. The author/illustrator of Found Dogs (2017) and Mail Duck (2020) addresses a just slightly older audience with this simple but effective message. The stories of Owen and Mzee (hippo and tortoise), Kumbali and Kago (cheetah and puppy), Themba and Albert (elephant and sheep), Koko, a signing gorilla, and various kittens, and Ben and Duggie (dog and dolphin) demonstrate that friendship can grow unexpectedly. Each story is told in two double-page spreads. The first introduces the two animals with a pair of quatrains; the second poses the question “Can we be friends?” and answers it positively on one page. On the facing page is a description of the friendship, naming the animals and explaining where and how it happened. The final spread shows a child of color and a variety of animals, asking “Whose friend will YOU be?” Sirotich uses heavy black line to outline her cartoon creatures and their settings. The text is relatively simple, appropriate for fledgling readers to read with an adult or on their own. Some of these stories may be familiar; others, not so widely publicized. A glossary defines animal-related words such as “animal shelter,” “runt,” and “sanctuary.” The author includes a list of her sources and suggestions for further exploration on the internet.
Child-friendly and appealing. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294158-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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