Will robot fans enjoy this bedtime book? Affirmative.
Three little robot brothers are headed for a breakdown at the end of the day if they can’t go to sleep.
Written entirely in dialogue printed in color-coded speech balloons shaped to correspond with the shapes of the speakers’ heads, Bardhan-Quallen’s text opens with a mother robot sending her three robot children (the eponymous brobots) to bed. Wordplay abounds. The littlest one, Beep, can’t go to sleep because he has “the flick-ups,” and big brothers Buzz and Crash try to help him. Their mother isn’t pleased that she hears “gears turning up there” well past bedtime and asks from outside their closed door if they “need a hard reboot.” Together, the brothers go through a checklist of steps to ready themselves and their room for sleep. The punch line arrives at book’s end when Beep finally drifts off and snores so loudly that Crash and Buzz cannot sleep. Throughout, Campbell’s illustrations depict the brobots in their room. Although their figures are more saturated than the watercolor-wash backgrounds, the translucent medium seems somehow at odds with the mechanized robotic characters, and it’s sometimes difficult to read the pictures and gauge emotions. Still, the mechanized protagonists will probably keep little ones engaged enough to sort out the potentially confusing images.
Will robot fans enjoy this bedtime book? Affirmative. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2290-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Instills a sense of well-being in youngsters while encouraging them to explore the natural world.
This reassuring picture book exemplifies how parents throughout the animal kingdom make homes for their offspring.
The narrative is written from the point of view of a parent talking to their child: “If you were a beaver, I would gnaw on trees with my teeth to build a cozy lodge for us to sleep in during the day.” Text appears in big, easy-to-read type, with the name of the creature in boldface. Additional facts about the animal appear in a smaller font, such as: “Beavers have transparent eyelids to help them see under water.” The gathering of land, air, and water animals includes a raven, a flying squirrel, and a sea lion. “Home” might be a nest, a den, or a burrow. One example, of a blue whale who has homes in the north and south (ocean is implied), will help children stretch the concept into feeling at home in the larger world. Illustrations of the habitats have an inviting luminosity. Mature and baby animals are realistically depicted, although facial features appear to have been somewhat softened, perhaps to appeal to young readers. The book ends with the comforting scene of a human parent and child silhouetted in the welcoming lights of the house they approach: “Wherever you may be, you will always have a home with me.”
Instills a sense of well-being in youngsters while encouraging them to explore the natural world. (Informational picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63217-224-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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