Pretty but forgettable.
Updated versions of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “Country Mouse and City Mouse” guide readers through three classic tales. The stories are updated with amusing modern twists, such as how one little piggie uses the leftover chopsticks from a plethora of takeout orders to build a house of sticks, and kid-friendly details include a flatulent hare. Related in verse (mostly rhyming couplets with the occasional inexplicable variation), the stories suffer from labored syntax and shoehorned rhymes: “Planning and thinking out how to build cleanly / Makes your house sturdy / And keeps our Earth looking greenly.” The internal logic of some of the tales may baffle discerning readers; in “Country Mouse and City Mouse,” for instance, a rhinoceros is terrified by a house cat, and a rattlesnake attends a mouse’s dinner party as an invited guest. The cheery, colorful illustrations populated by smiling anthropomorphic animals do a lot of heavy lifting, and the balance of white space keeps the nostalgia-tinged compositions looking fresh and crisp. The art may not be enough to make this a family favorite, however. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-13.2-inch double-page spreads viewed at 100% of actual size.)
Pretty but forgettable. (Picture book/folktales. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-24686-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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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