A real tail wagger.
A new dog in town has trouble making friends.
The pooch introduces himself with a message sprayed in urine on a brick wall: “Hello I am Toby.” Unfortunately, other olfactory messages—translated into signage readable by humans in watercolor, pencil, and ink illustrations reminiscent of Shirley Hughes’ work in their luminosity and brushwork—drown out the greeting. Worse yet, a further friendly smellogram on the sidewalk is so garbled by rain, garbage collectors, and the feet of passersby that Toby’s four-footed neighbors mistake him for a mean dog. What’s a lonely mutt to do? Dog lovers will delight in the canine rushes of various Fidos cavorting energetically across the urban scenes and endpapers (human figures remain hazy and peripheral, though seemingly racially diverse) and yelp with pleasure at Toby’s distinctly doggy solution to his dilemma. Confronted in the park by a tense, hostile pack, he approaches slowly and then suddenly drops his front end in classic “DO YOU WANT TO…CHASE ME?” posture. The canines respond with a howling chorus of “YES!” and the ice is instantly broken in a wild, gleeful rumpus. Heder may take a bit of artistic license in depicting over a dozen dogs unleashed in an apparently unfenced urban park setting, but young readers who’ve found themselves in a situation like Toby’s will take comfort in the cathartic close. The messages that the dogs convey in urine are hilariously apt: “Suki’s stick,” “Don’t trust the squirrels,” and “Anyone for a howl?”
A real tail wagger. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781419757518
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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
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