A fluffy, uber-adorable, bite-sized introducción al español.
Talk-show host Fallon and movie and pop star Lopez partner up to serve an introductory slice of whimsical Spanish learning.
“This is Pollo. She wants to play.” In the middle of the page, a cute white blob of a chicken—with dots for eyes with blush spots beneath them, stubby wings and legs, an unkempt comb on top—chirps a bright “¡Hola!” Leveraging full-color backgrounds with a distinct absence of any distracting details, Campos keeps the artwork centered solely on Pollo and whatever item she needs to play, play, play. Colorful visual simplicity here aims to capture younger readers’ attention, with great success. So, how does Pollo play? Pollo goes to la playa, plays a rousing game of fútbol, visits la biblioteca, and gets toys from la tienda. In one amusing scene, Pollo even hops on a plane to volar. Each scenario sets the scene with an English sentence before guiding readers toward a Spanglish translation. Fallon and Lopez establish this rhythm and pace early on and keep it intact throughout the book with little variation. The highlighted Spanish translations don’t quite follow a logical progression—sometimes, just the noun is presented in Spanish (“Go to la playa con Pollo?”); sometimes it’s a verb (“Bailar con Pollo?”). Still, they help bring to life Pollo’s delightful play sessions, and that in itself proves enough.
A fluffy, uber-adorable, bite-sized introducción al español. (glossary) (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-83041-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
