“Hurry! Hurry!” Rain is coming and Nora and her grandparents worry that the rain will come before the grass is dry and the hay can be gathered into the barn. In this fourth picture book about Nora, Gramp, and Gran, Haas (Unbroken, 1999, etc.) captures the urgency and worry as well as the joy of living close to the land. Nora drives the horse-drawn haytedder, around the field: “The forks of the tedder kick like dancing legs. They kick the grass high in the air and turn it over so the sun can dry the underside.” When the sweet grass is dry, grandpa races to rake it, while Nora drives along the windrow and the hayloader swooshes up the hay and pours it in the wagon. Then it’s the race to the barn when “the load of hay is as big as the moon.” Safe inside the barn, with the mountain of hay, they wait out the summer storm. A satisfying, lyrical story of rural life, handsomely illustrated with watercolor paints, colored pencil, and watercolor pencils. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-16889-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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