A thoroughly engaging, ingeniously designed Latino celebration.
A concertina-style board book features the Spanish nursery rhyme “Los pollitos dicen” on one side and an English translation on the other.
Readers who tap the book out of its slipcase can choose either version; neither language is prioritized in the book’s accordion-fold presentation. The illustrations are identical, as are the interactive features. The plot is simple: the chubby-cheeked yellow chicks squeal when they hatch, when they’re cold, and when they want a meal, and their hen mother fetches corn to feed them and then cuddles them to sleep. Charmingly, even in the English translation, the chicks squeal in Spanish: “¡pío! ¡pío! ¡pío!” a protest that is printed in large, red letters on the undersides of several flaps. (Others lift to allow readers to husk corn and to see the chicks nestled under the hen’s wing; a spinning wheel allows readers to send the rather tired-looking hen walking out to the cornfield.) The English translation shows itself in a couple of places, when the mother warms the chicks “head to heel” in a rather forced rhyme and in abandoning the sonorously stretched-out “a-cu-rru-ca-ditos” for the rather paler “snuggled up with mummy.” Still, in an environment when all too often it’s the non-English language that is the second-class citizen, this seems entirely forgivable. English speakers will want to read the Spanish so they can enjoy it fully.
A thoroughly engaging, ingeniously designed Latino celebration. (Board book. 1-5)Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9969959-0-0
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Encantos
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead.
An Easter-themed board-book parody of the traditional nursery rhyme.
Unfortunately, this effort is just as sugary and uninspired as The Itsy Bitsy Snowman, offered by the same pair in 2015. A cheerful white bunny hops through a pastel world to distribute candy and treats for Easter but spills his baskets. A hedgehog, fox, mouse, and various birds come to the bunny’s rescue, retrieving the candy, helping to devise a distribution plan, and hiding the eggs. Then magically, they all fly off in a hot air balloon as the little animals in the village emerge to find the treats. Without any apparent purpose, the type changes color to highlight some words. For very young children every word is new, so highlighting “tiny tail” or “friends” makes no sense. Although the text is meant to be sung, the words don't quite fit the rhythm of the original song. Moreover, there are not clear motions to accompany the text; without the fingerplay movements, this book has none of the satisfying verve of the traditional version.
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5621-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more...
Following on the successful Five Little Pumpkins (2003), Yaccarino teams with Rabe for bunnies.
The five pastel bunnies are cute enough, and the rhymes are accurate, if somewhat wordy for toddlers. But without a clear one-to-one relationship between the words and the pictures, it is not always clear which bunny is speaking and what is being counted. The bunnies, identified as first, second, and so on, hop around the pages instead of staying in a consistent order as the rhyme implies. Naming them by color might have been a better choice, but that would mean abandoning the finger-play counting-rhyme formula. The children who show up to hunt the eggs are a multicultural cast of cartoonish figures with those in the background drawn as blue and green silhouettes. Though the text on the back cover invites children to count the eggs, there is no hint as to how many eggs they should find. Neither the verse nor the pictures provide counting assistance. The youngest children will not care about any of this; they will be content to point out the different colors of the bunnies and the patterns on the eggs.
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more satisfying but fragile classic, Pat the Bunny. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225339-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HarperFestival
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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