Blackstone dances readers through a calendar year, inviting them to catalogue common items visible in each of a dozen simple, seasonal collage and gouache scenes. Beneath captioning rhymes (“Whirl into MARCH, come along with me! / The wind is whistling down the street—what can you see?”), she helps that catalogue along by listing a dozen or so items or other details per spread in a running footer, in this case: church, flag, truck, nest, clothesline, Frisbee, etc. Though everyone is smiling, even the occasional bunny or cat, in Carluccio’s varied, idyllic settings, and Christmas seems to be the only holiday celebrated, at least the human figures show a range of ages and skin tones, and one child drives a wheelchair. All in all, not a bad way to introduce the months or to give younger children some practice in pairing words to objects. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-84148-629-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A series of rollicking riddles with unexpected answers. In the first spread, the picture on the left apparently shows a rabbit in silhouette while the short verse on the right provides the clues: “He steals carrots... / His floppy ears are long and funny. / Can you guess who? That’s right! My….” Turn the page for the answer: “Grandpa Ned.” (Ned’s upside-down, with socks half-pulled off to resemble rabbit ears.) Grandpa Ned turns up twice more, as the answer to a riddle that seems to be about a cat and later as the setup answer to another riddle. The book’s four other riddles involve a pirate, snow creatures, a mouse hole and a dark cave. A lifting flap and a gatefold add tactile interest. Rex’s straightforward gouache-and–mixed-media illustrations downplay the mischief of the premise, appropriately lobbing visual softballs at an audience disoriented by the goof on a tried-and-true formula they’ve encountered over and over. In all, it’s a refreshing (albeit slight) spoof for jaded young readers who have aced easy Q&A books; some may find it too cool for the room. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-5566-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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