High-energy ride to nowhere.
A new take on the old song highlights the role of vowels in the English language.
“Old MacDonald had her farm, / a e i o u. / And when she came across an a, / this is what she’d do: / Saw barn planks, stack sacks….” Youngsters will never mistake this for the familiar song, especially when they attempt to read the tongue-twisting, nearly nonsense text aloud. Lawson’s giddily flowing style just doesn’t adapt well to this grammar lesson. The garish computer-generated art complements the silly tone by showing Old MacDonald fiddling with a Rube Goldberg–type contraption for sawing and stacking on the “a” page and continuing her over-the-top farm chores on the succeeding ones. There is really no story here, just a jumble of words that demonstrate the various sounds that each vowel can make. However, readers and listeners will enjoy following the action on each page right until the end, when Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald seem to settle down into a rowdy song with all their animals singing along. Teachers might find this helpful when working on vowels, and children will enjoy making lists of words that rhyme with the words in the story. No one will mistake this for anything other than a school exercise.
High-energy ride to nowhere. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-457-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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