Pleasing photographs with a slight story to encourage aspiring animal rescuers.
At an elephant orphanage in Kenya, a rescued baby grows from shy girl to leader of her pack.
Wildlife photographer Ellis documents the growth and ultimate release of the calf that keepers name Natumi and seven other orphaned baby elephants raised with her at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust until they are no longer milk-dependent. His clear images will help readers visualize their daily routine: bottle feedings, bathing in mud puddles, and both soothing and playful activities with their human keepers. An early photograph shows the tiny, shy calf hiding behind a keeper's legs. In most of these pictures, the eight are indistinguishable. Natumi’s transformation to pack leader happens offstage; readers have to take the author's word that she lags behind and later leads. A simple, expository text leaps over nearly three years of growth to describe their return to the wild. (Actually, the elephants are released to a rehabilitation unit, a protected area within a national park, but neither text nor endnotes deal with the transition from keeper-dependence to keeper-independence.) Thoughtful design sets legible, large white text on a dark-color background graced by images of local flora in a lighter color and often bordered by a Samburu-inspired pattern. A guide to pronouncing the animals’ names appears early on.
Pleasing photographs with a slight story to encourage aspiring animal rescuers. (map, facts, further information, photographer’s note) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2561-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
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
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