An engaging offering for sharp-eyed young adventurers.
In this follow-up to Dakota Crumb (2021), a request from her cousin Julien sends a mouse investigator to Paris to hunt down a most important book.
As oblique, rhymed hints lead Dakota into a shop called Le Mystére and then through a series of book-filled rooms, Murphy’s precisely drawn interiors, festooned with small details, invite readers to follow along and, perhaps, be first to spot the next clue. A clue located on the collar of a sleeping canine “monster” sparks a merry chase, but then a thrilling climb up to a high shelf reveals a small doorway in a volume labeled “Albert Camouse.” What’s behind the door? A surprise birthday party for Dakota, complete with the gift of a book whose pages are filled with tiny objects (a marshmallow, a sticker, a boomerang) for readers to go back and find in previous scenes! Aside from a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower on the title page, there isn’t much to see that is distinctively Parisian in the pictures, but the quest’s the thing—and the rewards are in taking close looks at the books, toys, and even delicious-looking pastries (it’s that sort of bookstore) on display. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An engaging offering for sharp-eyed young adventurers. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781536223309
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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