Early one spring, a girl is delighted when a flock of Canada geese arrive in her yard, but she is stricken when she realizes one of the geese has an injured foot. The next day, the foot is gone, and the girl wonders how a one-legged goose can possibly survive. In spite of her parents’ advice to let the wild animal learn to survive on its own, the girl feeds Goose cracked corn and keeps an eye out for her. One day in the fall, the geese are gone—all of them. The seasons turn, and the geese return, but this time, it’s only two: Goose, still with a foot missing, and a big, healthy gander. Best of all, seven goslings soon appear—all with both feet intact. The heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful story is based on a real goose from author Best’s (Shrinking Violet, 2001, etc.) own yard, making the happy ending touching rather than overly sentimental. The interplay between the text and the earthy, cut-paper illustrations is remarkable; while the text does not spell out what’s happened to Goose’s foot, the images of the injured limb evoke shock and sadness. Meade (Queenie Farmer Had Fifteen Daughters, p. 488, etc.) employs a woodsy palette of browns, greens, and blues. A variety of perspectives draws readers into the text: some scenes are portrayed from the girl’s point of view, others from Goose’s, some from the ground, some from the sky. Art and story complement each another again at the end: the final, spot illustration of Goose nuzzling one of her goslings on the pond while the girl’s oar drips in the background is an enlarged portion of the previous spread, and the girl’s amazed words repeat: “ ‘Look at you,’ I whisper, ‘Look at you.’ ” Quietly joyful, satisfyingly optimistic. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-32750-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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
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