Like the anonymous illustrator, Andersen's name is nowhere to be found here. Just as well.
A rhymed version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale is thickly swaddled in an array of touch-activated animations and sound effects.
Accompanying a singsong, forcibly rhymed narration, cartoon scenes feature a portly Emperor, courtiers with foolish faces and, as the requisite skeptics, both a bright-eyed commoner lad and a gloomy imperial basset hound. These and other figures, many recycled with unchanged postures from scene to scene, can be made to utter grunts, chuckles, cries of dismay and other sounds. Readers can also, with a touch, flick them from place to place or run the clothes-horse Emperor through a skimpy wardrobe of fancy garb. Despite cries that the Emperor "is not wearing anything upon his skin," he appears at the climax in a full and discreet set of underclothes—and then joins the two con-men in the finale to wave jovially and say, "Bye Bye!" Along with links fore and aft to the publisher's other offerings, children can opt for an audio reading, for phrase-by-phrase highlighting and for either auto or manual advance. The jolly music and background noises play regardless.
Like the anonymous illustrator, Andersen's name is nowhere to be found here. Just as well. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)Pub Date: May 27, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: TabTale
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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