A high-volume victory for compassion.
Loudmouth speedster Cheetah is sure that race day will be a walkover, but two clever little cats have other ideas.
Much like Shea’s little red roaring dinosaur (Dinosaur vs. Bedtime, 2008, etc.), for all that he’s bigger than anyone and kitted out in a tracksuit, Cheetah obnoxiously announces at the outset that he’s winning every race. Not only do his jokes fall flat—“Oh boy! If you guys had pajamas, I would be them! Because I’m the cat’s pajamas—get it? Never mind”—but so does he after scarfing down five pies in a preliminary pie-eating “race” and the huge sundae that his smiling feline competitors present as a reward; they also award him boxes for his feet and a too-big crown to cover his eyes as “prizes” in other events before the main race. Shea cranks up the energy with loud hues and figures that bound across broad expanses of white surrounded by emphatic bursts of multicolored text. He brings this variant on a trickster tale (most recently retold in Nathan Kumar Scott’s The Great Race, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara, 2012) to an unexpected close: Rather than glory in crushing Cheetah’s self-esteem, the cats give him their first-place medals and assure him that yes, indeed, he won that race too.
A high-volume victory for compassion. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-173083-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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
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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