A melodic tale with a clear message: Let your own voice ring out like a bell and let everyone hear.
Make your own kind of music.
Bell, a solitary, music-loving mouse, has no one to make music with. She sings to the “music” she hears at home—her teapot, rainfall, snow falling. Bell hears music everywhere. Her favorite song is the “bustling melody of life” beneath her window. Determined to join in, she grabs her “loudest noisemakers” and heads downstairs. Bell toots her trumpet, but no one hears; it doesn’t feel right anyway. Bell notices a nearby band and joins in on her keyboard. But when one of the band members points out that her instrument is in fact an accordion, she abandons it. At the park, Bell pounds on her drum, but she’s so loud that everyone looks up in surprise. As she wanders off, the music resumes. Bell closes her eyes and sings; when she opens them again, she’s surrounded by townsfolk playing along to her tune. Bell has “found a place in her town just by trusting her own voice.” This quiet, dreamily philosophical tale may waft over some kids’ heads. Still, many will appreciate its takeaway about finding your own voice and learning to accept yourself. The cozy digital illustrations are warmly colored, mostly in shades of orange; background characters are a mix of animals and humans who vary in skin tone.
A melodic tale with a clear message: Let your own voice ring out like a bell and let everyone hear. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593621776
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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