In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, flooding New York might not be the best-timed story idea. Larry’s promise of yet more...
In this blatantly commercial retread, the author of Night at the Museum (1994, revised 2007, film version 2006) gives the marine exhibits a turn to frolic.
Having hurried to work, museum guard Larry frets as he nods off that he’s left the bathtub faucet on back home—which translates in a dream to a flooded Manhattan and a museum building pushed out to sea by the blue whale and other reanimated specimens. The cartoon art looks equally dashed off, with sketchy backdrops fronted by hastily drawn figures like an octopus that never shows more than five tentacles and a seahorse that’s the same size as the adjacent sea turtle. Unsurprisingly, with help from his daughter Melissa, Larry gets the faucet turned off, the water drained away and the exhibits back in their proper places before dawn. Earnest closing disclaimers that it’s not actually possible either to flood Manhattan from a faucet or to pull the American Museum of Natural History anywhere are superfluous, if not downright condescending.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, flooding New York might not be the best-timed story idea. Larry’s promise of yet more sequels in the works is equally ill-advised. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8948-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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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