It’s a ride is rich enough in slapstick, comical mishaps, jokes and general silliness to make anyone want to invite...
In an improbably compelling quest, a goat and a rolling robot go on the hunt for a single sock’s mate.
Bah the goat finds it and trots (almost) silently behind as extroverted Beep the robot does the talking: “Hello, Pig. Does this sock belong to you?” Alas, not greedy pig nor frantic chicken, not angry ox, grumpy bear or bird, snake, monkey, frog, crab, giant squid—or, for that matter, clam, fish or rock own up. Framing angular, jellybean-colored cartoons in graphic panels and channeling classic Hanna Barbera–style humor and storytelling, Burks (Gabby and Gator, 2010) sends his odd couple “where no goat has gone before.” They trek up and down rollercoaster hills, through quicksand and ocean deeps in a search that outdoes even Eric Carle’s classic Do You Want To Be My Friend? (1971) for serial relentlessness. Reaching a sign reading “Go Back. End of the Road” Beep admits at last, “I guess we’ll never find the other sock.” But: “It was a Great Adventure!”—and, as the final picture’s visual punch line reveals, that second sock was along for the entire ride.
It’s a ride is rich enough in slapstick, comical mishaps, jokes and general silliness to make anyone want to invite themselves along. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7613-6567-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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