With a little time, love, and patience, even a huge, green reptile can make a great pet.
A how-to guide on caring for a pet dinosaur.
An unnamed child who already has a dog receives a dinosaur egg in the mail. Along with reading the instructions, which make up the whole of the second-person text, readers witness the fun that comes with a pet baby dinosaur. They meet the adorable, green dinosaur when it hatches. First things first, readers learn, you have to feed your dinosaur—maybe eggs, bananas, cereal, and bread. Next, it’s time for a walk in the park. The baby theropod is depicted leaving a huge pile of poop in the grass, a total laugh-out-loud moment for any young reader (and a bummer moment for the dino’s child caregiver, who is ready with shovel and wheelbarrow). After a splash in the park’s fountain with his friends close by and a lesson in sharing, it’s time for lunch and the most adorable picture in the book, when the dinosaur takes a nap on top of his young human caregiver. After a long day in the park, it’s time to head home and get ready for bed, which gives readers a posterlike closing image of child, dog, and dino. A natural for fans of Gareth Edwards and Guy Parker-Rees’ Never Ask a Dinosaur to Dinner (2015), this outing is notable for its capable black protagonist.
With a little time, love, and patience, even a huge, green reptile can make a great pet. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0568-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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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