Imaginative, delightful, and very froggy.
Sammy and the dog Chocolate have frogs on their minds.
They listen for the frogs that live in the marsh behind their home. As the moon and the first stars light their way, they quietly approach in hopes that this time they will catch one, though nothing is said of their plans should they actually succeed. The frogs are incredibly loud, but no matter where Sammy and Chocolate wiggle and crawl, they can’t see the little amphibians anywhere. When they give up and just lie quietly in the grass with frog music all around, though, one of them plops right on Sammy’s chest. Then all kinds of frogs appear all around them, but Chocolate’s enthusiastic barks and splashes scatter them. When they return home, Mom is wonderfully patient and supportive. Sammy narrates the proceedings, describing the sights, sounds, and emotions with clarity and detail in simple language and syntax that captures their joy and wonder. Fernandes’ lovely illustrations are in perfect harmony with the natural setting and the characters’ exuberance. And oh, those frogs: flying, diving, and splashing and with just a hint of the more determined frogs of David Wiesner’s Tuesday. The text is placed amid the illustrations with the frog sounds standing out bold and highlighted, with lots of exclamation points for emphasis. Sammy and Mom present White, and Sammy’s gender is never stated, with illustrations that seem deliberately ambiguous.
Imaginative, delightful, and very froggy. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77147-375-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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