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WARTHOGS PAINT

Name: WARTHOGS PAINT
Author: Pamela Duncan Edwards
ISBN: 0-7868-0470-X

A MESSY COLOR BOOK

by Pamela Duncan Edwards & illustrated by Henry Cole ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2001

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This popular team’s warthogs return, fresh from their sloppy kitchen counting experience (Warthogs in the Kitchen, 1998), to make a fun mess with buckets of paint. It is raining and the warthogs have decided to paint the wall. First the primaries are introduced: “All colors can be made, I’ve heard it said, / As long as we have some yellow, blue, and red.” (The color words sport the actual color.) They paint great swipes of color on the wall and then get down to their specialty, making a real fiasco, but with enough control to the mayhem to produce orange, green, and purple. “What a terrible mess! But see, it’s clear: / Mixing blue and yellow makes green appear”—in great pools on the floor, which are transferred to the wall. All said and done, a rainbow materializes on the wall. A little color quiz concludes the story. It’s not Margaret Wise Brown’s Color Kittens—there is little of the magic of color here, it’s all process, and the verse is far from transporting—but it is a solid, slapstick introduction to color, plus utterly inspirational when it comes to making a rainy day bright. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: July 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-7868-0470-X

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

- BOOK REVIEW
FOUR SEASONS OF FUN
by Pamela Duncan Edwards ; illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PRINCESS PIGTORIA AND THE PEA
by Pamela Duncan Edwards and illustrated by Henry Cole

- BOOK REVIEW
WHILE THE WORLD IS SLEEPING
by Pamela Duncan Edwards and illustrated by Daniel Kirk

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TEN LITTLE FISH

by Audrey Wood & illustrated by Bruce Wood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004

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This charming, colorful counting tale of ten little fish runs full-circle. Although the light verse opens and closes with ten fish swimming in a line, page-by-page the line grows shorter as the number of fish diminishes one-by-one. One fish dives down, one gets lost, one hides, and another takes a nap until a single fish remains. Then along comes another fish to form a couple and suddenly a new family of little fish emerges to begin all over. Slick, digitally-created images of brilliant marine flora and fauna give an illusion of underwater depth and silence enhancing the verse’s numerical and theatrical progression. The holistic story bubbles with life’s endless cycle. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-439-63569-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FULL MOON AT THE NAPPING HOUSE
by Audrey Wood ; illustrated by Don Wood

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BIRTHDAY QUEEN
by Audrey Wood ; illustrated by Don Wood

- BOOK REVIEW
IT'S DUFFY TIME!
by Audrey Wood & illustrated by Don Wood

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YOUR BABY'S FIRST WORD WILL BE DADA

by Jimmy Fallon ; illustrated by Miguel Ordóñez ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2015

Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.

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A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.

A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.

Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)