Adelaide and her buddy will help kids get “the whole picture.” (Picture book. 5-7)
In this follow-up to Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies (2016), Adelaide and her friendly bear are back to ace mathematics.
Dressed in a sweater patterned with geometric shapes and arithmetical symbols, Bear is ready to tackle math assignments. Although her class is working on first-grade addition and subtraction, Adelaide makes far-reaching claims about Bear’s mathematical prowess. She proceeds to detail ursine creatures’ varied skills, and the brightly colored digital illustrations show Bear, with Adelaide’s help, demonstrating these. From building a treehouse using complex measurements and comparing a compass face to a watch face, they go on to simple geometry and arithmetic. When Adelaide and her friend go berry picking, he shows her how to “sort [the different fruits] into groups so they can analyze their haul and sum up their rewards.” Real-world connections are further clarified in an ice cream shop, when Bear and Adelaide get superduper cones and the tab is $12.45. (Too bad it’s impossible for clever readers to use the price board to understand how the cashier arrived at that total.) Adelaide’s statement that bears understand that “math is everywhere” clinches it for Mrs. Fitz-Pea. Adelaide presents white, Mrs. Fitz-Pea has brown skin, and the other students are diverse. While it’s a swift survey, it effectively conveys the importance of math in everyday life.
Adelaide and her buddy will help kids get “the whole picture.” (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68446-079-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Editions
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
