Cornball comedy guaranteed to pun-ish your funny bone. One night Chicken has a dream about a treasure of cracked corn buried under a great pink pig. He tells his friend George, who says, “You must be yolking!,” but the next day they set off to find the barn. Even though it’s “Fry-Day,” they dare to cross the road and escape a cat and a hawk attack. They travel all night and when the sunny side comes up, they find the barn and the great pink pig who asks why they want the corn. “Because it’s what chickens grow on,” says George. The pig replies, “I thought they grew on egg-plants.” O’Malley hatches every fowl joke and riddle and then some. His deep-black-ink line illustrations with scanned-in color scratch in an etching-like texture and are egg-ceedingly entertaining. Details in the drawings play off the balloon dialogue, e.g., a bakery sign advertises “Coop Cakes.” Scramble together bits of the comic cartoon picture books by M.J. Auch with pieces of the egg-zagerated humor of the movie Chicken Run and season with the wacky wit of Doreen Cronin and you have a frittata of fun. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9684-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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
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