A tongue-in-cheek reminder that good food doesn’t have to come in a box, jar or plastic bag.
Would a supermarket catering to animals stock pizza? Ice cream? Sugary snacks?
Definitely not, at least according to this import. Instead, the snail is going to opt for lettuce, kale and herbs, the goat for turnips and gourds, the cat for milk (“the kind with the double cream”), and the seals for fresh mackerel and canned sardines. A three-for-two sale on crumbs draws ants and birds, the gibbons will go for grubs, and for bee customers, the whole frozen-food section (“never very popular”) has been replaced by a meadow. Though most of the stock is neatly stacked on shelves or in shopping carts in the painterly illustrations, bears snack on pawsful of blueberries, a mongoose steals eggs, and there are other signs of lively disorder. Mulazzani dresses her thickly brushed animals in human clothes and stands them up on hind legs, but they’re still recognizable enough to match, in a closing visual quiz, with arrays of preferred edibles—including, perhaps as a concession to human viewers, fruit ices and minipizzas—spread out on a table. Packaged and processed goods? Still in evidence. Nonetheless, the overall emphasis on fresh fruits and veggies sends a salutary message to young consumers.
A tongue-in-cheek reminder that good food doesn’t have to come in a box, jar or plastic bag. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5448-3
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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 retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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