Presented in a mix of sequential panels and full-spread views, this easy-to-follow debut tale is rich in both drama and...
In this wordless odyssey, a postprandial nighttime outing turns particularly adventurous for two animal buddies.
With his mouse friend in the front basket, a frog's bike ride down a moonlit country road leads to startling encounters with a fierce-looking but friendly cockatrice, a computer gamer that looks like a bat crossed with a human and, just off a nearby beach, a menacing giant white crab. These creatures are only representative, though, of the many exotic and fantasy animals that Furie strews about each grainy-surfaced scene as he leads his two explorers past open woods, into twisting tunnels underground and through a deserted town decorated with gargoyles on the way to the sea. Surfing back to shore atop a pair of dolphins, the frog and mouse conclude their journey by climbing to a headland to watch a bright sunrise. A foldout poster of the cast (and cockatrice) serves as dust jacket.
Presented in a mix of sequential panels and full-spread views, this easy-to-follow debut tale is rich in both drama and sights that are less dangerous-looking than delightfully strange. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-56-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: McSweeney's McMullens
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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