This debut picture book will delight more than dog lovers.
Homer, a goggle-eyed, middle-size houndish-looking canine, yearns to go to Wolf Camp, a place “Where every dog can live as a wolf—for an entire week!”
Yes, a sleep-away camp for dogs. After persistent pestering, the mutt’s given permission to go. On arrival it is introduced to the counselors, enormous, sharp-nosed, shaggy wolves named Fang and Grrr. Zuill’s pen-and-ink drawings with watercolor wash perfectly conveys the dogs’, er, sorry, campers’ inner feelings, from the getting-to-know-you butt sniffs to their expressive eyes as they receive their instructions. Fang’s safety-talk speech bubble is so extensive that the text bleeds off the page. Homer, like any child in a new situation, slowly warms up to the goofy golden retriever–like Rex and the tiny gray Chihuahua Pixie, the fellow campers forming a pack that learns to hunt, howl, and sleep outside like real wolves. Although Homer has a rough start, confiding in a letter home that the “food is yucky and has hair on it” and the bugs “are gross,” when it is time to leave, the tears flow. Readers witness Homer’s return to domesticated life, as the dog curls up on a comfy round bed under a blue electric blanket. Homer is not an unchanged dog, though, but an honorary wolf with a certificate and a howl to prove it.
This debut picture book will delight more than dog lovers. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-50912-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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