Tip and Tucker are not Elephant and Piggie, but they’re cute and provide good practice for new readers.
This beginning reader introduces children to two hamsters with quite different personalities.
Part of the I Am A Reader line, this first outing for Tip and Tucker opens in a pet shop, where Mr. Lopez has come to purchase a pet. Tucker, a larger tan hamster, is excited and tries to get Tip, a smaller gray-and-white hamster, interested. But Tip is the opposite of curious, adventurous Tucker, and he hides in his plastic igloo. Mr. Lopez purchases both hamsters, some food, and a cage. Tip gets even more nervous when the man tells Rosa (whether proprietor or clerk is unclear) that the hamsters’ new home will be noisy; he doesn’t like noisy. The trip to the car is bumpy, and the car ride is more of the same. But Tucker likes the look of their new home: It’s got blocks, jump ropes, balls, and lots of books. Mr. Lopez’s parting words raise more questions for the two—“See you tomorrow. Your first day of school!”—and set up the sequel. Short sentences in a fairly large font and repetition help make the text of this rather bland plot manageable for confident beginning readers, while Ceolin’s adorable illustrations give children clues and nicely show the contrast between nervous Tip and reassuring Tucker. Mr. Lopez and Rosa are probably both Latinx; he with light skin and glasses and she with brown skin.
Tip and Tucker are not Elephant and Piggie, but they’re cute and provide good practice for new readers. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-53411-006-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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
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
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