Consider this an unessential novelty unless sturdy books with nonanimal sounds are sought.
Recorder, piano, violin, guitars, drums, and xylophone are played by a pig, elephant, cat, zebras, bears, and mice respectively, while chips embedded in each page play an appropriate snippet of music.
Toddlers and most of their parents won't easily recognize all the tunes. The violin snippet is attributed to Brahms; the piano tune is an obscure section of Mozart's “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”; music for the xylophone and drums are credited to Gallimard Jeunesse, the original French publisher. The book demands some significant leaps of faith. How exactly an elephant can sit at a piano and press the keys isn't at all clear, for instance. All the action takes place in a circus setting, though the tunes are not normally associated with circus acts, nor will toddlers recognize the venue from the illustrations. The cartoonish animals bear little resemblance to any real animal, and the fiddle-playing cat is identifiable only through the text. None of this is likely to bother toddlers, who will quickly find the sound buttons embedded in each board page and delight in pressing them repeatedly to charm (or annoy) their adult companions—who will barely have time to read the brief text before their children are ready to move on to the next noise.
Consider this an unessential novelty unless sturdy books with nonanimal sounds are sought. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-338-03261-1
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This will have readers putting on their dancing shoes to do the “cha cha cha” with their dino-babies
It's not the first time dinosaurs have been featured in a clever Boynton board book. It seems she—and we—can't get enough.
As her fans know, Boynton has a sly wit that respects the intelligence of her young fans and amuses the adults asked to “read it again.” In this book she introduces nine dinosaurs, each of which dances in a way that seems totally appropriate for that particular species. “The blue Stegosaurus goes SHIMMY SHIMMY SHAKE. / The red Brontosaurus goes QUIVERY QUAKE.” Drawing on her experience as a children’s musician, she writes a text that trips along like a song with rhymes that make sense but don't intrude. The illustrations, typical Boynton, reflect her greeting-card background. They are cartoonish but manage to capture the unique personality of each creature. The unnamed dinosaur narrator looks genuinely distraught at not being able to name the “tiny little dino” that “goes DEEDLY DEE.” Spoiler alert: the tiny little dinosaur is probably Compsognathus and would be about the size of a small chicken. Young dinophiles would be impressed if the dinosaurologists in their lives could supply that factoid, but alas, they will have to look it up.
This will have readers putting on their dancing shoes to do the “cha cha cha” with their dino-babies . (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8099-4
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet but not essential book.
A whole host of children presents a whole host of balls in this new installment in the Baby Unplugged series.
There are so many kinds of balls in this little board book. Big ball, shiny ball, game ball, plain ball, spot ball. And not all are necessarily balls. Some are round objects, like the snowball and the clay ball or the blueberry that is a “tiny ball.” Some balls are verb balls, like the “throw ball, / catch ball, / go ball, / fetch ball!” There is even a gotcha! ball that’s “not ball”—it’s a cube! And all these balls are being played with by an equally eclectic group of children. African-American, Asian, brown-skinned, and blond and brunette white children are all represented here in illustrations that are charming and clear but not particularly artful. It feels as though both author and illustrator are trying so hard to include so much that they’ve almost forgotten to have fun. It’s reminiscent of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish but without the spark that turns an OK book into a timeless classic. Best suited for young children who are already quite verbal.
A sweet but not essential book. (Board book. 2-3)Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-936669-42-4
Page Count: 14
Publisher: blue manatee press
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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