The pictures are a weak link, but younger readers and listeners will happily take this quick dive into the sea of random...
Smooth segues provide the cement for this high-wattage, if less-than-carefully illustrated, set of animal facts.
Oswald’s cartoon images of popeyed, well-caffeinated creatures crank up the visual energy to frantic levels. Unfortunately, at the outset, they contradict the author’s correct observation that hippos’ noses are placed on the tops of their heads. In another misstep, both illustration and a thought balloon misleadingly suggest that bats can recognize a passing 747 with echolocation (their range is much, much smaller). For the most part, though, DiSiena and Eliot’s revelations are both accurate and just as detailed as they need to be to keep and hold attention. They glide from the hippo’s titular lack of buoyancy (they walk along river bottoms) to the surprising fleetness of sea turtles. From there, it’s on to jellyfish, which don’t actively swim but do flash with bioluminescence—just like fireflies. So it goes, until the parade of facts circles neatly back around to blue whales (“actually the largest animals that have ever lived”) and a closing assurance that “unlike hippos…blue whales sure can SWIM!” Though the authors supply no supportive references or leads to further information, they do tuck in an additional “Fun Fact” about each of the 14 animals at the end. A companion, Chickens Don’t Fly and Other Fun Facts, publishes simultaneously.
The pictures are a weak link, but younger readers and listeners will happily take this quick dive into the sea of random knowledge. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9352-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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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