Ideal as a picture-book gift for graduating seniors, this also provides a beautiful lesson for its intended child audience.
It’s not the destination but the journey that matters for one sweetly chipper little chipmunk.
“Nature is a fickle thing. One wonders what mood she was in, the day she invented chipmunks.” From the start we are informed that upon reaching their seventh week of life, all chipmunks leave their mothers and set off into the wide world. So it is that Mino’s mama gives him a kiss and he boards a bus, taking with him several seeds and fairly humming with excitement. The bus ride is a long one, and Mino has time to befriend everyone who comes aboard, from the driver to the last passenger. After traveling and talking and sharing together, they reach the end of the line. The final two-page wordless spread simply shows that Mino's seeds, many of which he has given away to his fellow travelers, have sprouted into beautiful sunflowers. Lyrical language conveys how some passengers talk about big and small things: “And when a passenger reaches their stop and leaves, it’s the small things they shared that linger on in everyone’s hearts.” Endearing Mino will suck readers in with his excitement about the world; older readers about to embark on their own journeys, like soon-to-be or recent graduates, will especially relate to him, though so will youngsters. The art is an adorable array of penciled details and soft pastel colors. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Ideal as a picture-book gift for graduating seniors, this also provides a beautiful lesson for its intended child audience. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781838740887
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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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