There’s inspiration in the refrain: “He didn’t know how well he sang. It just made him whole.” (Picture book. 3-7)
One of Chapin’s songs is brought to life in this book about facing criticism.
In a Midwestern town populated by a variety of anthropomorphic animal characters, Mr. Tanner is a baritone bear who joyfully sings in his dry-cleaning shop. His friends and customers encourage him to use his musical gifts professionally. Even though “music was his life, it was not his livelihood,” he lets himself be persuaded to go to New York to perform at Town Hall. He gives it his all onstage but comes away with poor reviews from music critics. Crushed, he goes home, never to sing publicly again. Langdo’s soft-edged watercolor illustrations, many in album-cover–shaped squares, capture the arc of Mr. Tanner’s unfulfilled dreams. The book opens with a bird’s-eye view of a small town and ends with the bear framed by his shop windows, singing to himself. A line of clothes is cleverly hung from a musical staff that winds its way from Dayton to New York. Aside from a few changes, the rhyming text of the book is the same as the original song. A facsimile of the typed lyrics with Chapin’s handwritten corrections is included. Like “Cat’s in the Cradle,” the late singer/songwriter’s best-known work, this story about good intentions going awry has a melancholy air.
There’s inspiration in the refrain: “He didn’t know how well he sang. It just made him whole.” (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9913866-8-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Ripple Grove
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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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