A sweet family story.
A coal-mining pit pony takes to the Traveling life.
Polonius works and lives day in and day out underground save for a two-week stint aboveground when the mines shut down. Seeing horses grazing untethered and unfenced with a Traveling family, Polonius takes his chance and escapes, following them to their next camp. Though initially Grandad is unwilling to take him, Lucretia persuades him that Polonius will “be useful somehow.” Indeed, though he’s more a well-loved pet than anything else, one day he proves his mettle by guiding draft horses Cushy and Thor through a dense fog so the family can get its wares to the port for shipping. Romani storyteller O’Neill gives readers a classic story of an undersized hero who makes good. His Traveler family is a tightknit, loving group that works hard even as it pursues an itinerant life. The sparing introduction of dialect further cements the family’s cultural specificity; while outsider readers may not know exactly what Daddo means when he tells the family they’ll “set off early and stop halfway for some habben and a besh,” the general concept is clear (and an unobtrusive opening glossary enlightens them fully). The equines’ ability to talk to one another further underscores their importance within the culture. Thomas’ delicate illustrations depict an early-20th-century industrializing English countryside; Lucretia and her family display a range of skin tones from pale to brown.
A sweet family story. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78628-186-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Child's Play
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
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