However appealing the device, this pales in comparison to the many other, superior animal alphabets already out there.
This German abecedary uses an imaginative device in which a series of animals arrives at a new zoo.
Rhyming descriptions feature each creature’s characteristics as the zookeeper and his assistant interact with the new arrivals. “When she glided in across the rug, / Our ANACONDA gave me a hug. / As the first one here, I guess she’s the winner, / But why does she keep on mentioning dinner?” (Presumably the translation and the necessity to rhyme force the contextually peculiar “rug.”) The illustration shows the snake wrapped around the keeper and wearing his cap. The first-person narration is carried throughout. Some animal choices are unusual; D is for Dromedary, while C is for Chameleon, for instance. H is for Hare, not rabbit, and N is for Nile crocodile. For the challenging letters, Q is for Quoll, U for Uakari and X for Xinusil (a “martian…from the moon”). The interactions of the two men with the animals add some nuanced humor. The subtitle states the book is an ABC and a counting book, but the counting part is incidental; 26 numbers run across the tops of the pages, with each ascending number highlighted. There is no legend to the animals.
However appealing the device, this pales in comparison to the many other, superior animal alphabets already out there. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-3-89955-714-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Little Gestalten
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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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