A very enjoyable read-aloud for would-be urban farmers and kids just needing a good laugh. (Picture book. 5-7)
Raising chickens has become a popular hobby in urban areas where some people have small backyards.
Winston and Sophie, younger brother and older sister, live in such a community. When their mother spots a sign offering five fowl of different breeds, they adopt chickens delightfully named Dawn, Divina, Daphne, Delilah, and Desirée. Sophie announces the news at show-and-tell, and Winston does the “Chicken Dance” on a crowded city bus, yelling “THE CHICKENS ARE COMING TOMORROW!” The siblings are ready to collect eggs, but there’s nary an egg in sight. The kids put on a play, provide music and stories, anything to “get them in the mood,” but nothing happens. They begin to interact with the chickens, learning their habits, a process depicted in eight circular vignettes on a double-page spread. When the children finally discover eggs, Sophie explains that different breeds lay eggs of varied colors and sizes. The brightly colored, amusingly detailed, naïve illustrations depict a white family, but there are diverse people at school, on the bus, on the street, and in their building. From “Sophie’s Chicken Chart” on the last page, readers can learn that Daphne, with her pouf of white feathers (Winston thinks it’s a hat) is a Polish breed chicken, actually from the Netherlands, and other facts. An author’s note provides resources on raising chickens.
A very enjoyable read-aloud for would-be urban farmers and kids just needing a good laugh. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-30097-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 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 retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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