From layout to text to artwork, this counting book takes “playing with your food” to a new level.
Photographs of salad ingredients, embellished with details done in black ink, create whimsical arrays from one through 10.
Each expansive, white double-page spread presents a large, bright numeral, its printed name, and a very funny invention, from one Avocado Deer to 10 Clementine Kitties. The ink strokes are playful and active, making the various ingredient-characters come to life. The pages with nine Romaine Dogs are particularly droll, with clever usage of the ups and downs of a lettuce leaf combining with the artist’s swift pen strokes to show familiar canine antics. Less is decidedly more: after the alliteration of Tomato Turtles, it is refreshing to see Cucumber Alligators rather than Cucumber Crocodiles, and the text for the number eight meanders cheerfully from the established, animal-titling routine by showing eight Flying Walnuts, not Walnut Birds. The ingredients range from familiar to gourmet, with radicchio producing delightful manes on seven lions. Toddlers may giggle as they learn numbers and practice counting, while slightly older children will want to get out their markers and try to emulate the artwork. The counting ends gracefully with a wooden bowl full of all 10 goodies and a recipe for dressing. Even the endpapers are entertaining, crammed with tiny reproductions of the photographs.
From layout to text to artwork, this counting book takes “playing with your food” to a new level. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-99974-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There is always room in the Easter basket for a counting book, and many readers may appreciate having another simple,...
A cheerful brown bunny hiding behind the edges of an Easter basket looks just as surprised as young children will be to find the chicks revealed as each egg “hatches.”
With help from a reading partner, young children are encouraged to count down the eggs as they disappear with each page turn. Alternatively, they can count up as the chicks are revealed. A simple phrase at the top of each right-hand page states the number of eggs in the basket. The line at the bottom (half of a rhyming couplet) tells how many chicks readers should look for. The numbers are spelled out, requiring young children to recognize the word instead of the more familiar numeral. On the left-hand page, the spaces previously occupied by an egg begin to fill with meadow plants and critters, eventually becoming a scene as busy and cheerful as a greeting card. This book begs to be touched. Each egg is made of shaped plastic that protrudes through die-cut holes on the verso; they can be pressed but seem to be securely anchored. The pastel chicks are lightly flocked, providing an additional tactile experience. Although the pages are thicker than paper, young fingers may find the holes a convenient way to grip (and possibly tear) the pages.
There is always room in the Easter basket for a counting book, and many readers may appreciate having another simple, nonreligious holiday book. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-74730-1
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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