Despite (or perhaps because of) the odd bits, this book successfully celebrates the private, gleeful, imaginative world of...
Short poems and accompanying illustrations make up this word-format poetry anthology for little ones.
Thirty-five poems run the gamut from high-spirited wordplay for very young listeners (“Kippy-cuppy / Kippy-cuppy / Cup, cup, cup”) to relatively more complex ideas (“I’m a very, very, very slow train / And I’m very, very late again”). Some poems validate the strong emotions all children feel at some time, such as “I Don’t Want,” “I Am Hungry,” and “I Am Angry,” while others nestle into their private worlds: “You fell off the table / And landed on your head. / I picked you up / And put you to bed,” with the accompanying illustration showing a teddy bear tucked into bed. Riddell’s fluid watercolor-and-pencil illustrations bring a grace to each poem, no matter what its subject, and he depicts many ethnicities of children (in addition to animals and nonscary monsters). The text changes size and color with each page and often within the poem itself, a fine detail in this well-designed book. Some poems are strange (“Why did the man bend down low? / Why did the man eat some snow?”), reflecting the bemusement very small children feel at the doings of adults. The poem titled “Don’t Squash” shows an elephant who’s just stepped on something that may be a jelly doughnut, but the red ooze it splatters may provoke more than a few questions.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the odd bits, this book successfully celebrates the private, gleeful, imaginative world of toddlers. (Picture book/poetry. 1-5)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8116-6
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead.
An Easter-themed board-book parody of the traditional nursery rhyme.
Unfortunately, this effort is just as sugary and uninspired as The Itsy Bitsy Snowman, offered by the same pair in 2015. A cheerful white bunny hops through a pastel world to distribute candy and treats for Easter but spills his baskets. A hedgehog, fox, mouse, and various birds come to the bunny’s rescue, retrieving the candy, helping to devise a distribution plan, and hiding the eggs. Then magically, they all fly off in a hot air balloon as the little animals in the village emerge to find the treats. Without any apparent purpose, the type changes color to highlight some words. For very young children every word is new, so highlighting “tiny tail” or “friends” makes no sense. Although the text is meant to be sung, the words don't quite fit the rhythm of the original song. Moreover, there are not clear motions to accompany the text; without the fingerplay movements, this book has none of the satisfying verve of the traditional version.
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5621-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more...
Following on the successful Five Little Pumpkins (2003), Yaccarino teams with Rabe for bunnies.
The five pastel bunnies are cute enough, and the rhymes are accurate, if somewhat wordy for toddlers. But without a clear one-to-one relationship between the words and the pictures, it is not always clear which bunny is speaking and what is being counted. The bunnies, identified as first, second, and so on, hop around the pages instead of staying in a consistent order as the rhyme implies. Naming them by color might have been a better choice, but that would mean abandoning the finger-play counting-rhyme formula. The children who show up to hunt the eggs are a multicultural cast of cartoonish figures with those in the background drawn as blue and green silhouettes. Though the text on the back cover invites children to count the eggs, there is no hint as to how many eggs they should find. Neither the verse nor the pictures provide counting assistance. The youngest children will not care about any of this; they will be content to point out the different colors of the bunnies and the patterns on the eggs.
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more satisfying but fragile classic, Pat the Bunny. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225339-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HarperFestival
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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