A mostly solid piece of garage building with winning characters and very cool robots.
Backyard robot-building is the order of the day in an app that will appeal most to budding tinkerers.
Two young friends, Hanna and Henri, meet up to visit Hanna's aunt, a goggles- and apron-clad inventor. Hanna and Henri work together to create their own robot (with some help from readers to sort parts and choose the creation's look in one of several challenges). How much readers enjoy this will depend on their tolerance for extraneous characters and locations that have nothing to do with the main story. There are also two minor annoyances: The text is too tiny to be read without manually adjusting its size (an option in an easy-to-access sliding menu), and load times between screens feel slow in this otherwise very responsive app. On the other hand, the app has pleasingly detail-heavy art that appears hand-drawn, and the depictions of women and girls in the story as inventors and robot builders are refreshing. But perhaps the biggest selling point is that the central robot project can be built in lots of different ways, making the story one that invites repeated read-throughs. The animation is fluid, and the resulting robots never fail to be worth the trouble. There are even pages of bios for all the story characters.
A mostly solid piece of garage building with winning characters and very cool robots. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 4-10)Pub Date: April 26, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Tales & Dice AB
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share.
In this latest in the series, Little Blue Truck, driven by pal Toad, is challenged to a countryside race by Racer Red, a sleek, low-slung vehicle.
Blue agrees, and the race is on. Although the two start off “hood to hood / and wheel to wheel,” they switch positions often as they speed their way over dusty country roads. Blue’s farm friends follow along to share in the excitement and shout out encouragement; adult readers will have fun voicing the various animal sounds. Short rhyming verses on each page and several strategic page turns add drama to the narrative, but soft, mottled effects in the otherwise colorful illustrations keep the competition from becoming too intense. Racer Red crosses the finish line first, but Blue is a gracious loser, happy to have worked hard. That’s a new concept for Racer Red, who’s laser-focused on victory but takes Blue’s words (“win or lose, it’s fun to try!”) to heart—a revelation that may lead to worthwhile storytime discussions. When Blue’s farm animal friends hop into the truck for the ride home, Racer Red tags along and learns a second lesson, one about speed. “Fast is fun, / and slow is too, / as long as you’re / with friends.”
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063387843
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
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