Both this title and its companion are good for reinforcing word families and building reading confidence, but sometimes a...
Bolger and Hodson explore phonics in cartoon form.
New readers encountering the opening sequence—“Cave Bear / Wave Bear // Lazy Bear / Crazy Bear”—will hardly be aware that they are supposed to be learning basic phonics because they will be giggling over the “wave” bear in surf shorts and the “crazy” bear with scissors cutting down the “lazy” bear’s hammock. On subsequent pages, the “crazy” bear, wearing an easy-to-see red-and-white–striped shirt as well as an offensively vapid smile, wreaks mild havoc. From the opening long A, each vowel is explored in subsequent chapters with occasional glosses from Gran, a bespectacled human grandmother who explains phonics rules in speech bubbles: “Long vowels say their own names.” Some of the vocabulary is quite challenging (“creature,” “relief,” “fuel”), adding an unexpected level of difficulty. Companion title Gran on a Fan uses rhyme to make its point with short vowels, but some of the choices (“bomb,” “mob,” “rob,” “cops”) take this book for emergent readers to some dark places that slapstick visual humor cannot save.
Both this title and its companion are good for reinforcing word families and building reading confidence, but sometimes a phonics book is just a phonics book . (Early reader. 5-8)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-228598-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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