Although it has some textual flaws, this quiet, introspective work beckons readers to keenly observe.
Verse alternates with facts about pollinators, depicted with their preferred flowering plants.
Gray establishes a playful pattern: In each of three successive double-page spreads, she pairs a nonpollinating animal and a pollinator. “Flowers are calling a little black bear. / No, not a bear! He doesn’t care. // They’re calling a butterfly / to dip from the air.” Next, an anchoring spread gathers and names the three preceding plants, providing prose nuggets about their pollinators’ preferences. Regarding the trumpet honeysuckle, “Hummingbirds use their long tongues to reach the nectar hidden in deep tubular flowers, and hover as they drink.” The magnolia garners this revelation: “Beetles have been visiting flowers for more than 100 million years.” Verse sections can be uneven. Often lovely couplets—rhyming or near-rhyming—bump up against lines that don’t scan well; in one case, the rhyme pairs a plural subject with a singular object: “Flowers are calling a rabbit to stop. / No, not a rabbit! It’s not their habit to call a rabbit. / He might grab it! // They’re calling a bee fly to visit their spot.” Pak’s pretty, digitally worked watercolors achieve equilibrium between stylized reduction and naturalistic verisimilitude. Two spreads visit flowers with nighttime pollinators—a nice touch. Concluding prose invites children to examine flowers for elements like pattern, shape and smell, explaining how pollinators utilize these attributes.
Although it has some textual flaws, this quiet, introspective work beckons readers to keenly observe. (fact page, website) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-34012-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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