Whether readers extrapolate from Steve’s experiences to their own is open to question, but the story’s message of the need...
As the title indicates, Chapman plays with the raised-by-wolves trope in this first-day-of-school book.
As might be expected of a feral child, Steve’s transition to school is not a smooth one, despite a pep talk from his wolf mother (“just be yourself”). A day of mayhem yields scowls from his classmates and a note from his teacher. The next day does not go much better, but his mother is determined that he keep at it. On the third, though, “Steve’s wolf instincts” save the day when he follows his nose to the lost class hamster. (Happily, he does not then eat it.) Chapman’s bright, flat digital cartoons depict Steve as a towheaded white child with a protruding lower canine; Steve’s kindergarten class is nicely multiethnic, including his brown-skinned teacher. Although Chapman doesn’t take the scenario as far as it could go—somehow these wolves have acquired clothing for Steve and more or less trained him to wear it—he still generates quite a few laughs. From his dead-bird sandwich (wings protruding from the bread) and his habit of sitting on his haunches and howling to his gleeful marking of the playground slide, Steve’s wolflike behavior will have children giggling.
Whether readers extrapolate from Steve’s experiences to their own is open to question, but the story’s message of the need to balance individuality with group expectations is neatly presented. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-25390-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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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