It’s time now for picture books to start weighing in on the Deepwater Horizon debacle. Reed’s effort is a tender beginning. A young boy is looking forward to a vacation fishing, swimming and building sand castles with his cousin, who lives on the Louisiana coast. When they arrive at the beach, they are dismayed to find blobs of oil polluting the sand and, worse, fouling three pelicans. Uncle Willie is fuming (“His jaw is clenched and quivering in a way that scares me,” says the boy) as he and Aunt Olivia and the kids get the birds to a wildlife rehab center. There commences the arduous process of strengthening the birds, washing and drying them. The text explains the cleaning process without becoming overly pedagogic, and the birds are returned to clean water. Reed doesn’t belabor the mess that the oil spill has caused, partly because that is not in the nature of her artwork, which is childlike and two-dimensional; the characters all have big potato heads (Uncle Willie does a very good angry potato head). This is not an Armageddon scenario—no birds die, down the road the beach is unpolluted—as the story pulls up short of that. Way too short: This object lesson needs perhaps a little sting, something to ensure remembrance of the dirty deed, whose long-term consequences won’t be known for years. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2352-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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
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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