Despite an educational veneer, this is mostly a noisy toy book.
Listen to a few bars of famous Mozart compositions, as interpreted by animated cartoon animals.
Showcasing—or at least playing—six different Mozart pieces, the book’s pages include clear, inset plastic buttons with embedded chips; each triggers a short, approximately 20-second snippet of music. Some will be familiar, such as a variation on “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and some less so—but little ones will likely enjoy pushing the buttons repeatedly whether they recognize the music or not. Predictably, the sound quality produced by a tiny speaker compressed within a board book is not especially clear or crisp. In fact, unless the book is partially opened to the final page, the sounds are somewhat muffled, a distinct problem for a book dedicated to an orchestral composer. Flat, digitally rendered illustrations are heavy on primary colors and low on nuance, but they are charming enough as they valiantly attempt to interpret the music, with bears in classical garb dancing to “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” It’s confusing that “Sonata Facile,” a piano piece that “moves swiftly along,” is played by a young tortoise; somewhat more successful is the dramatization of the short text’s (somewhat forced) musical metaphors, such as the “merry and bright” tropical birds that enjoy the “Clarinet Concerto.”
Despite an educational veneer, this is mostly a noisy toy book. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-54710-8
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While it is (mostly) an appropriately simple introduction to the sport, the lack of player diversity is discouraging, if not...
A baseball-shaped primer for the littlest sluggers.
Brimming with baseball facts, each round page presents heavily captioned photos and one or two sentences of declarative text. Baseball vocabulary abounds, and little ones can learn the names of the equipment, the positions, various kinds of pitches (“The pitch can be a curveball, slider, fastball, or sinker”), and a few different rules (“If the batter hits the ball, they run to first base”). In the photos, almost all the players, who have a range of hair lengths and look as though they could be both male and female, are white. The final double-page spread shows two different celebratory shots of two apparently all-white Little League teams, with nary a person of color in sight. The small trim size is approximately 5 inches in diameter, which confines the little action that is portrayed, and the narrow binding will likely not survive robust play or library circulation.
While it is (mostly) an appropriately simple introduction to the sport, the lack of player diversity is discouraging, if not out-and-out astonishing. (Board book. 2-3)Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0399-4
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While an audience of young vehicle aficionados or avid skaters might be attracted, this is a disappointing and poorly...
Learn how Zambonis clean ice in this awkwardly shaped book.
In the voice of the Zamboni, dull pronouncements about each step of the ice-cleaning process give readers a rudimentary but adequate overview of how the vehicle works. The book is cut into the shape of a Zamboni machine (and driver), but the unusual format adds nothing of substance and even detracts from the story. Each page turn removes a section of the Zamboni, but the image under the cutaway doesn’t necessarily match, creating pages with two confusingly juxtaposed scenes. Though the pages are thick, they are prone to fraying, and the edges remain sharp and jab fingers painfully, especially around the severe cuts defining the driver’s face. The pen-and-ink–style digital art is underwhelming, and attempts to make the art feel lively fall flat. A puppy sitting next to the driver is far too rabbitlike, and the American flag found on every page looks odd, as if a poor quality sticker were applied over the images. There’s a single hockey player of color; the driver and crowds are white.
While an audience of young vehicle aficionados or avid skaters might be attracted, this is a disappointing and poorly designed book . (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-27773-9
Page Count: 8
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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