Not a keeper of an early reader
Otter enjoys playing outside with Teddy but doesn’t enjoy baths—at first.
While the controlled text is accessible to new readers as it follows Otter’s antics outside with its stuffed animal friend Teddy, characterization in this story is rather difficult to understand without prior familiarity with Garton’s picture books about Otter. Otter is depicted as an anthropomorphic animal, and Teddy is a toy. But then lines between fantasy and reality become blurred when the (never fully seen) human character, referred to as “Otter Keeper,” insists that muddy Otter and Teddy bathe. Bubbles, bath toys, and splashing end up making the dreaded bath fun after all. It’s unclear whether Otter Keeper is an adult or a child, but it is clear that Otter Keeper is worn out when Otter asks for another bath and is refused. Rebuffed, a cleaned-up Otter brings Teddy back outside to play, and an intentional splash in a mud puddle results in the coveted second bath. The illustrations are appealing, but they are largely symmetrical with the text. This may support a new reader’s decoding efforts, but they do little to add visual interest to the staid story or to clarify its characterization.
Not a keeper of an early reader . (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-236658-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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