Purr-fect fare for cat lovers, with a bit of sensitivity training slipped in.
An extreme case of kitty charisma, based on a true story.
With significant but logical embroidering, this tale recounts the arrival of a small alley cat at the elegant Hamilton Hotel, just as the 1947 Greater St. Louis Cat Club Show is getting underway. Though given a hostile reception by the stuck-up cat owners (if not their well-groomed pets), the tiny stray not only gets a warm greeting and plenty of snacks from the hotel staff, but comes back at the show’s end to charm the judges into awarding a pair of blue ribbons and to win both a name and a home from the hotel’s hostess, Marcella Duffy. As the author notes in an afterword, only the hotel staff would have included people of color at that time, and so it is that Duffy and all the human guests are white-presenting, while most of the bustling kitchen staff, led by a fictive chef and his daughter, are darker-skinned. Younger audiences may not notice the divide until it’s pointed out, but they’ll see it on a second run-through for sure, and the endpapers sandwiching this historical anecdote do offer a more racially diverse gallery of cat owners fondling their furry charges. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Purr-fect fare for cat lovers, with a bit of sensitivity training slipped in. (photo) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781250864765
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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