By turns funny and sweet—and sure to hit the spot.
An introduction to reading—and to the gentlest of mysteries.
Although Dot the ladybug enjoys finding dots and spots “here, there, and everywhere,” she’s stumped when her friend Spots the dog asks for help finding his snack’s “missing dot.” Readers in the know will recognize the dog’s treat as a doughnut, but Dot and Spots need time to come to this understanding. They begin searching for the ostensibly missing dot as Dot encounters a sunflower’s round center, a round blueberry, and Spots’ ball. None of them are the missing dot! While new readers will be supported by the controlled text’s use of rhyme, assonance, and short sentences, they’ll also gain encouragement from the conceit of the book, which positions them to know more than the main characters do. Throughout, Coleman’s cheery, cartoon-style illustrations ratchet up the humor of the accessible text, showing Dot using a magnifying glass to examine these objects in her search and visually adding a subtle detective-story flair to the narrative. The mystery is solved when Dot comes across her friend Jots the mouse, who is the doughnut maker. “My snacks have a hole, but they are whole,” Jots explains. In this treat of a story, the homophone is the icing on the cake.
By turns funny and sweet—and sure to hit the spot. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780063137509
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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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