With its intriguing photographs but less-than-compelling story, this will appeal mainly to fans of her first outing.
A little girl named Anja has another Scandinavian-themed adventure in this story illustrated with supersized photographs, a companion to The Christmas Wish (2013).
This time the story has a summertime setting, with Anja visiting her cousins at their remote mountain farm. The three children explore the countryside, playing with goats and riding together on the family’s huge horse. During a game of hide-and-seek, Anja wishes she were small enough to hide even more successfully from everyone, and her wish is mysteriously granted. She shrinks down to just a few inches, flying off on the back of a friendly finch to experience her new size in relation to other settings and animals. She uses a pine cone as a sled, makes a birch-bark boat with a squirrel and rides home astride a helpful rabbit. The high-quality digitally composed photographs draw readers in with sweeping mountain vistas and charmingly posed interactions between Anja and her talking animal friends. The text, however, is a little too wordy and enthusiastic, with a too-jolly tone and a surfeit of exclamation points: “Anja! You’re so tiny!” The ending falls back on the tired was-it-a-dream-or-not conclusion. “Maybe it wasn’t a dream!” marvels Anja as she notices bits of vegetation on her sheets.
With its intriguing photographs but less-than-compelling story, this will appeal mainly to fans of her first outing. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37922-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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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