Love conquers all, including a pair of initially snippy chameleons.
A couple of chameleons literally fall in love.
Cyrus’ eponymous chameleon returns with his friends Mike and Polly in this follow-up to Invisible Lizard (2017). Napoleon is happy with his lot. The branch he calls home in the tropical forest—lushly illustrated here by Atkins with vines, moss, ferns, and fungi—bounces and rings with their play. But when Mike and Polly find mates to spend their time with, Napoleon is soon all alone. He carves a big, lonely heart into his branch, which weakens the limb, and it snaps. Down falls Napoleon to a lower branch, where there happens to be another chameleon, Josephine. “Yikes!” says Napoleon. “A girl!” Their relationship starts out a little rocky—she accuses him of imitating her, and he responds, “Well, excuse me for being a chameleon”—but they eventually meet each other halfway, and they spend a lovely evening together under the stars. Despite a couple new words for readers’ vocabularies (“warty lumpstool”; “whiffle blister bud”), not much new ground is turned by the story, but the artwork is an eyeful. The forest is richly colored, and the chameleons change suit to match, with their independently rotating eyeballs taking everything in. Josephine even turns into a starry night to mimic their evening under the sky.
Love conquers all, including a pair of initially snippy chameleons. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-53411-015-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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