Can skittish Roxie keep her big secret from fellow summer campers? Riding the bus with a variety of canine breeds (all in bright yellow T-shirts), long-eared Roxie looks nervous. She's afraid the others will tease her if they find out she's brought her blankie, hidden in her pooch pouch. All are nice and helpful except for Lacy, a tall poodle who tries to intimidate everyone. She steals Roxie's bunk in the Mutt Hutt and, when the two are Splash pals together, manages to overturn their canoe. The next day, her mean pranks continue; she disrupts the craft table, leaves her pooch pouch out for others to trip over and crashes into the Frisbee players. Later, Lacy doesn't show for Pup Paddle Time at the pond; reluctantly, a search party is formed. They find Lacy in the Mutt Hutt, clinging to her blankie. The shocked silence that follows is broken when Roxie bravely confesses her blankie secret. Soon every other pup follows suit—"Best friends rock both night and day / Camp K-9 pups, yip yip hooray!" Roxie's present-tense narration contains all the right details of both activities and feelings. Hayashi's clean pictures, in watercolor, pen and colored pencil, have a gentle look, apt for target audience. This empathetic tale should calm the nerves of all novice campers-to-be. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56145-561-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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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