A lovely, lyrical depiction of friendship.
Nature takes center stage in this quiet, memorable story of companionship.
On the vast plains, a young girl accompanied by a dog feeds a gray pony in a summer pasture. One day the sky is spangled with a murmuration of starlings. Though the girl’s mother muses that “You never see just one,” when the flock moves on, a single bird remains. The girl asks the starling where the other birds have gone, but naturally, it doesn’t answer. Pony and starling spend their days eating and resting together. When a winter blizzard looms, the girl leads the pony to the barn, but despite her urging, the bird won’t enter. After the storm, the starling is nowhere to be found. Months pass, and the murmuration returns, “swirling around a dancing, prancing pony” in the spring field. Then the flock leaves—“all but one.” Is it the same bird? We want to believe so. Imbued with ambiguity, the text is gracefully eloquent, using human activities—the girl’s chores, her storm preparations—to anchor the natural melody. The tone is matched by the calm, watercolorlike images, foregrounding the soft-edged figures against the sweeping sky, punctuated by the black-and-white dog and the girl’s dark hair framing her pale face. Against the spare, neutral backgrounds, the jet-black bird seems to lift off the page.
A lovely, lyrical depiction of friendship. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781773069791
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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