A memorable and entertaining celebration of adoption.
Wolfgang is an all-animal family first popularized on Greig’s Instagram.
The meaning of family is important to 12 animals who became one family through adoption. In order to fully acquaint readers with the members of this family, individual portraits of each animal and an amusing fact are presented in a double-page gallery at the beginning of the book. Family members include nine dogs, one rabbit, one pig, and one chicken Each animal has a quirky side that is visible through the illustrations, which digitally collage photographs of the animals onto cartoon backgrounds. It is obvious to readers that there is much love and acceptance in this book despite all of their differences. Readers see them milling around the kitchen together, making a bubbly mess while bathing, and engaging in movie night. Throughout the book, various ages, sizes, and abilities are depicted to represent a diverse family; graying muzzles indicate that several are of advanced years. All of the members of this family are loved, whether it is the old cocker that trips all of the other dogs, the big pig who eats all of the food, the deaf dog, or the blind dog. More a description of their imagined living circumstances than a story, the busy, amusing scenarios will endear these characters to readers. Jodi Picoult provides an afterword.
A memorable and entertaining celebration of adoption. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-310-76823-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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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