Great fun, but perhaps best saved till after the first nightmare! (Board book. 18 mos.-5)
A lighthearted look at things that go bump in the night.
Eventually, every child has a bad dream. This book aims to empower toddlers by putting their nightmares into perspective and their monsters in the closet. Fun, inventive artwork and a battery of well-deployed tactile elements admirably reduce nightmare bugaboos to manageable, nonthreatening proportions. This “hair-raising touch-and-feel book” boasts a wide assortment of fuzzy, furry hides, googly eyes, stringy strands of hair, debossed ghosts, bumpy werewolf noses, scratchy dragon scales, and sticky giant-squid suction cups to keep small hands busy as tykes read along with caregivers. The brightly colored monsters meld monstrous size and teeth with shapes and expressions just goofy enough to convey charm and approachability rather than menace. The combination works. The scarier qualities of these monsters acknowledge children’s fears rather than dismissing them, but the humorous and gentle touches allow children to reassess the level of danger their nightmare creatures actually pose. Children are “double dared” to interact with each monster, scratching the ogre’s hairy feet, pulling the witch’s stringy hair, tickling the ghost, and so on. Young readers can then banish each menace with the admonishment, “Go away, Nightmare Monster! INTO THE CLOSET!” What level of protection that offers, who knows, but every kid loves an invitation to yell.
Great fun, but perhaps best saved till after the first nightmare! (Board book. 18 mos.-5)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-2-40800-432-3
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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