Ew! Here’s an enticing critter children won’t soon forget.
A malodorous insect narrates its autobiography.
A brown marmorated (“veined or streaked like marble,” according to the glossary) stink bug describes its summer life cycle and activities in diary form. While the creature celebrates its birth in early June, having hatched from one of 28 eggs laid on the underside of a leaf, others are less than thrilled. This is partly because S. Bug’s more-vile-than-fragrant aroma protects it from being eaten and threatened by neighbors. Text is minimal in this fact-filled, captivating title. Sentences are concise and witty, capturing the voice of this feisty individualist. Readers will learn much about the smelly insect, including facts about its plant-based diet—which, unhappily, makes it a crop-damaging pest—and how it develops, after several larval stages, into a fully grown winged creature. Throughout, pithy, comically negative points of view about the stink bug are expressed as hand-lettered dialogue by other animals and insects. The book ends with S. Bug’s search for a suitable winter home, which it locates in early October and from which it will emerge the following spring. Appealing colorful illustrations depict natural-world details, rendered in vivid colors. White space and light-colored backgrounds allow kids to focus on S. Bug’s activities and habitat. Illustrated facts about stink bugs appear on the endpapers, which are designed so that no text is covered by the flyleaves.
Ew! Here’s an enticing critter children won’t soon forget. (sources, further reading) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4053-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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
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