Fans of the T. Rex series and all dinosaur devotees will enjoy this merry celebration.
Idle continues her series about a sister and brother and their dinosaur friends (Sea Rex, 2015, etc.) with a tongue-in-cheek manual on how to prepare for the Christmas holiday.
The children, who are white, are entertaining guests: four dinos, including a gigantic, golden-brown T. Rex. The group works together to make decorations, bake cookies, hang stockings, and trim the tree. One dino destroys the fireplace trying to hang stockings, and when the T. Rex tries to add the star to the top of their tree, it knocks the tree over and crushes it. But in this cheery story, there are no grown-ups around to object to decorating disasters. On Christmas morning, the children are surprised by a new sort of Christmas tree: T. Rex decorated with lights, paper chains, snowflake ornaments, and a pterosaur on top. This Christmas-morning surprise is given extra panache by a gatefold page that opens upward, adding height to the inventive dino-tree effect. The final double-page spread shows the children and dinos spending time together, enjoying “the real magic of the season.” Glowing illustrations in Prismacolor pencils use a vibrant palette of fruity hues with an overall ambiance of radiant light, and it is the visual counterpoint they lend to the deadpan text that gives the story its humor. The bright colors, flattened perspective, and old-fashioned clothing worn by the children lend a retro vibe.
Fans of the T. Rex series and all dinosaur devotees will enjoy this merry celebration. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-29011-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Still, this young boy’s imagination is a powerful force for helping him deal with life, something that should be true for...
Oliver, of first-day-of-school alligator fame, is back, imagining adventures and still struggling to find balance between introversion and extroversion.
“When Oliver found his egg…” on the playground, mint-green backgrounds signifying Oliver’s flight into fancy slowly grow larger until they take up entire spreads; Oliver’s creature, white and dinosaurlike with orange polka dots, grows larger with them. Their adventures include sharing treats, sailing the seas and going into outer space. A classmate’s yell brings him back to reality, where readers see him sitting on top of a rock. Even considering Schmid’s scribbly style, readers can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he ponders the girl and whether or not to give up his solitary play. “But when Oliver found his rock… // Oliver imagined many adventures // with all his friends!” This last is on a double gatefold that opens to show the children enjoying the creature’s slippery curves. A final wordless spread depicts all the children sitting on rocks, expressions gleeful, wondering, waiting, hopeful. The illustrations, done in pastel pencil and digital color, again make masterful use of white space and page turns, although this tale is not nearly as funny or tongue-in-cheek as Oliver and His Alligator (2013), nor is its message as clear and immediately accessible to children.
Still, this young boy’s imagination is a powerful force for helping him deal with life, something that should be true for all children but sadly isn’t. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-7573-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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