Pleasant and heartwarming but with somewhat sluggish illustrations.
A picture book about a lost puppy’s adventure, ultimately finding friends and home.
Harry, a tiny puppy, is brought to the park by his best friend, Emma. Overexcited, he chases after a ball and then is himself chased by two large dogs. Escaping them, he becomes lost. A friendly stray cat named Ginger leads him back to the park, but darkness has fallen, and Emma is gone. Ginger leads Harry to town, where, as they are raiding garbage cans in an alley for dinner, a large cat threatens Ginger. Tiny Harry finds his voice and barks, scaring it away. Then Harry smells home, and the two friends make their way there. Reunited with Emma, Harry remembers Ginger, and the final illustration shows both Harry and Ginger on Emma’s lamp, fed and warm and home. The simple story is heartwarming, especially for animal lovers, and the final double-page spread is a treasure. But too many of the other illustrations lack a liveliness of line, so successfully rendered in Marc Simont’s lost-dog story, The Stray Dog (2001). Readers will appreciate the clever endpapers, but they may puzzle over the title page illustration, which shows the puppy ensconced in its round, safe bed—positioned center page (a design placement of stability)—with no hint of any tension to come.
Pleasant and heartwarming but with somewhat sluggish illustrations. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84895-909-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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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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