A fun pet romp for new readers of chapter books.
Sunny the pug’s life is satisfying until her owner brings home a younger dog, Rosy, who is very annoying.
Using numerous minimalist drawings and brief, large-print text, this early chapter book gently relates an adult dog’s challenging adjustment to a rambunctious puppy. Sunny mostly enjoys her solitary life: a morning snack (if her human remembers to put it out), followed by yoga, a little television, arranging her stuffed toys, and maybe a nice nap. The arrival of exuberant Rosy makes all of her customary activities hard to enjoy. Then Rosy accidentally throws Sunny’s favorite toy out the window and later, feeling guilty, runs off to find it. Sunny knows her duty and goes to locate and bring back the younger dog, in the process discovering that she’s come to love her little sister. Ahn’s spare illustrations are the stars of this show, using just a few lines to evoke emotion, drama, and especially humor. Although many pages include just a sentence or two of text, some of the words, such as “surveillance,” “anticipated,” and “stealthily,” will stretch the young intended audience. Considering how brief the text is, the two dogs leap, lifelike, off the pages, Sunny reserved and just a bit surly and Rosy fired with youthful enthusiasm.
A fun pet romp for new readers of chapter books. (Fiction. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-11845-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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