A cornucopia of visual textures dresses up a rather obscure story.
How alarming is an incorrect drawing assignment?
It’s “just a normal day” in this forest where cheerful insects live in flowers as tall as trees. The schoolroom, inside a tree, has a blackboard and geometry tools. But when students hand in their assigned homework, a drawing of an elephant, the teacher’s so stunned by Ladybug’s picture that her googly eyes roll around in her head—one eyeball up, one down. “What on earth is that?” Miss Dragonfly exclaims. Ladybug replies: “It’s “a giant ball of fluff.” (It looks more like a nonfluffy black scribble, like a knotted ball of twine.) The nonelephant drawing earns Ladybug various outsized reactions: a medical visit to check her hearing; stunned parents who react by spying on her; strange looks from the entire community. The disproportionate reactions don’t seem to be the joke; the message seems merely that a direct question can clear away confusion. Luckily, Aguirre’s zesty illustrations perk everything up. Hilarious yet harmonious visual juxtapositions abound. Insects live atop leaves and under toadstools, yet they have landlines, sinks for brushing teeth, and, amusingly, potted plants. Tiny, crisp, red autumn leaves thrive next to lush, verdant greens; hazy background tree landscapes glow dimly and gorgeously; a beetle’s bodily stripes are sharp while tree bark and snail shells are soft. Firefly wings are delicate lace. Insects’ faces are blue, green, or beige.
A cornucopia of visual textures dresses up a rather obscure story. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-84-16733-88-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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
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