A playful excursion for young mariners.
A cavalcade of boats both realistic and whimsical.
“Old boats. New boats. / One-or-two boats. // Tall boats. Small boats. / Heave-and-haul boats.” So begins Boswell’s playful, rhythmic, and compact text. Mostov’s illustrations, which are graphically simple and pleasingly two-dimensional in dark and bold colors, depict a wide range of floating apparatuses, mostly in profile. There are human-powered boats, such as kayaks, a dinghy, and pedal-powered boats, and nature- and machine-powered vehicles, such as a few types of sailboats, submarines, a motorboat, and an airboat. As the text goes on, they grow quite fanciful and include a sailboat carried aloft by balloons and sea-horse– and flamingo-shaped vessels. Seemingly in order to cram in as many as possible, some of the pages cut the boats off in unsatisfying ways, and boat-obsessed toddlers may be disappointed they don’t see a full image of a shipwreck or a container ship. Although there’s a clichéd white, bearded sea captain with a bird on the shoulder, a diverse group of folks pilot these crafts and include multiracial crews on several boats and a brown-skinned family clad in modern gear and paddling a traditional-looking canoe.
A playful excursion for young mariners. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63217-268-6
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Little Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A disappointing twist on a popular theme. More gimmick than engaging.
This noisy board book is designed to thrill tots fascinated with all things construction.
A tactile backhoe digger is center stage on each of the five cutout pages, complete with flaps. Brief rhyming text describes the machine’s actions as it works throughout the day. Animal characters engaged in manual labor or operating other machinery—a bulldozer, crane, road roller, and dump truck—describe more work that goes on at a construction site in small speech bubbles. Finding the mouse in every scene adds to the fun. On each page, a little bird sporting a hard hat invites young builders to press various parts of the silicone digger to activate a range of distinct sounds. The digger’s track pad sounds different from the sound of its arm moving dirt. The problem is that the digger itself is passive; the track pad and arm don’t actually move. The machine stays in the same place on every spread. The caution light beeps but doesn’t light up. Savvy kids will quickly realize that all the sounds are accessible from the first spread without having to turn the pages. The sound is the most engaging part of the book, but with only five sounds, this feature won’t hold most youngsters’ attention for long.
A disappointing twist on a popular theme. More gimmick than engaging. (Novelty board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68010-684-8
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
A book for car-loving kids.
A concept book about many kinds of vehicles.
Simple, first-person text translated from Dutch and delivered by a child, is divided into four sections: “Want to come for a ride?”; “Want to help?”; “Want to get some work done?”; and “Want to race along?” In all but the final section, which has but two race cars, the child introduces several kinds of vehicles, one per double-page spread, as racially diverse, unnamed characters interact with them. The “work” section includes a tractor, garbage truck, street sweeper, bulldozer, excavator, dump truck, and crane truck. The brief “help” section includes an ambulance, police car, police van, fire engine, and a tow truck. The lengthy, first section about “a ride” isn’t so straightforward and includes a car, bus, jeep, camper, ice cream truck, moving van, delivery van, limousine, semi truck, tanker, and car transporter. Those listed after the camper in the first section aren’t vehicles that the child rides in, and many readers might feel they’d be more appropriately located in the working-vehicle section. There is no story to follow, but bright, boldly colored illustrations with thick outlines and cheery characters match the direct text’s style and evoke the feel of Lucy Cousins’ work. The narrator has a perfectly round face, pink skin, and dark hair.
A book for car-loving kids. (Picture book. 1-3)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60537-399-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Clavis
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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