Small amusement.
A tiny helper’s moment to shine.
It’s Christmas Eve, and Santa is almost ready to go. When double-checking his list, he’s surprised and delighted that there’s no one on the Naughty List this year. But that means that Santa and the elves will need to deliver more toys than ever. A mouse who lives in the reindeer’s barn, who has always wanted to help Santa and his crew, tells Santa that with so much work, someone needs to oversee the stockings so they aren’t forgotten. Santa agrees, and he and the mouse, Tinsel (nicknamed Tiny Tin), set off on their circumnavigating sleigh ride. Dressed in a miniature Santa outfit, Tinsel walks along the mantle of the first house and slides trinkets and sweets into each family member’s stocking, even leaving a special treat for a local mouse. Though this tale is sweet, there’s little new here. It’s yet another tale—and a fairly low-stakes one at that—where a character saves Christmas; plus, it’s similar in poetic structure to Clement C. Moore’s famous “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Still, it does offer the opportunity for a new holiday tradition, as the little mouse tells readers to write both Santa’s and Tinsel’s names on their Christmas letters next year. Though digital, Graegin’s illustrations have a hand-drawn look and a 1940s-1950s feel. Santa is light-skinned, while the elves vary in skin tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Small amusement. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-314207-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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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