Good fun for older preschoolers and early-elementary children eager to flex their conceptual muscles.
Disparate beasts frolic in a variety of landscapes, all to demonstrate myriad combinations of opposite pairs.
A dozen two-page spreads illustrate simple antonyms: big and small, hide and seek, naughty and nice, and more. The pictures are full of mischief. In treating wet and dry, for example, the left-hand, "Wet" page features various animals coping with a rainstorm. One raccoon finds shelter under a giraffe, while another frolics on the riverbank. A small frog high-steps with a big umbrella, and a squirrel and mole huddle under large green leaves. On the "Dry," right-hand page, a panda suns on a beach towel, a family of ducks swim in a pond with a frog lazing on the mother's back, a rhino dozes under a tree, etc. "Up" and "Down" includes a seesaw, a tall tree and tall, broad rocks with a tightrope stretching from one to another. Oh, yes, and an elephant's trunk poking up like a periscope from a hole. Compositionally, these spreads are not for beginners; although the gutter clearly defines the division between opposites, the illustrations typically depict one landscape, and the many animals scattered across them require fairly sophisticated eyes.
Good fun for older preschoolers and early-elementary children eager to flex their conceptual muscles. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-9359-5426-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lemniscaat USA
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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