An adventure in interactive reading, like Hervé Tullet’s Press Here (2011) but with a plot.
Doorways traced with a fingertip become die-cut portals on following pages as O’Byrne invites readers to help an errant crocodile find a suitable home.
Starting off in darkness, the cartoon illustrations are “illuminated” by a hand clap and a page turn to reveal a big, surly-looking crocodile named Carter—who, as a sign indicates, needs help to find his way home. Tracing a circle on the facing page and thinking of a wet place lands the green grumbler in a stormy ocean. Whoops! How about a better habitat? As Carter the croc is a hefty sort, “pushing” and “jiggling” is also sometimes needed to get him through each successive entryway, and readers can also blow him dry along with other participatory actions. After landing in snow and in desert sand, Carter at last fetches up in a comfy tropical river. Aaah—his snarl becomes a blissful smile. In one oddly gender-bending early scene he clutches a pair of seashells to his (featureless) chest and lets seaweed dangle over his (equally featureless) crotch. Younger readers, at least, will probably just find that funny and follow the instructions to keep tracing, pushing, and, finally, bidding him, as well as the meerkat and other companions who have hitched rides along the way, loud goodbyes (for now).
An adventure in interactive reading, like Hervé Tullet’s Press Here (2011) but with a plot. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9634-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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