A CATegorically unhelpful introduction to estimation.
Grandma’s return from a trip to Katmandu triggers frantic rounds of cleaning up and gift shopping among a feline family.
Young readers in need of a truly methodical guide to making estimates may have to look elsewhere, since Stephens confines definitions and actual strategies to her afterword, rendered in a smaller type. The tumultuous tale itself shows the kitten siblings wildly choosing numbers at random: “Tons of toys are sCATtered on the floor. How many more can we stuff in this closet?” Nor do the cluttered, frenetic cartoon illustrations invite viewers to make judgments of their own, with household items often simply jumbled together in indistinct masses that spill off the edge of the page; the containers or spaces meant for them aren’t clearly depicted, either. The shopping expedition doesn’t go any better: The lack of a price tag on the “purrfect present” (a scarf) leads to uneducated guesses ranging from 42 cents to 500 cents, with the actual price improbably turning out to be near the low end of that span. The author waits until the end to offer the crucial insight that estimation “is not finding a right or wrong answer,” as with other sorts of math problems, before cheerily bidding “Goodbye for meow!”
A CATegorically unhelpful introduction to estimation. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781635927979
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Astra Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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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