Not nearly as easy as it looks—but inspiring.
After a pair of farmers whose land is no longer productive let it go wild, both farm and wildlife flourish.
This hopeful tale is based on the author’s own experience, recounted for adults in Wilding (2019), of rewilding the lands around Knepp Castle, in England. Here, Nancy and Jake, an imagined interracial couple, are unhappy farmers burdened with debt for heavy equipment and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as many farmers are. Their land is soggy and their animals, sad. Spurred by a brochure advertising safari trips to Africa, they decide to make their own wilderness. They wait—for only the length of a single spread—and, without the constant disruption of modern farming methods, the former farm sees the return of brambles, wildflowers, insects, and birds. Nightingales, migrating from Africa, return to sing. Neighbors object of course, but they are convinced of Nancy and Jake’s wisdom when a flood is averted due to the land’s new ability to absorb and retain stormwater. In Tee’s line-and-color illustrations the sad faces of the farmers and their animals become happy; flowers and birds abound. A final spread shows a charming English village now gone wild as well, with flowers and bushes replacing sedate lawn and pavement, storks nesting on a chimney, and a bountiful display outside a produce shop. The straightforward storytelling and exuberant illustrations should work well for group read-alouds. The author’s note includes photographs.
Not nearly as easy as it looks—but inspiring. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7112-6287-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Ivy Kids
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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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Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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