With its short, rhythmic text and its rich, embellished, shiny pages with animals, flowers, and trees just waiting to be...
It’s a dark and stormy night, with wind and thunder and lightning—even the river is rising up—and all the baby animals are scared.
Mama Elephant, big and comforting and knowledgeable, tells the little ones about each source of their fear and assures them several times that “You’re safe with me.” When the baby animals whimper because of the wind, she patiently explains: “He’s an old friend of the forest. He brings us seeds from faraway lands.” When the loris asks about the thunder’s noise, Mama Elephant takes the animals’ fears away by telling them that Thunder is “groaning from the weight of the rain.” In a little while “she will turn as fluffy as cotton flowers.” She explains: “Lightning sparkles in the sky when clouds collide.” The explanations are not meant to be scientific but rather poetic and comforting in a lullaby mode. The repetitive structure and lovely language are soothing, but it is the images that are outstanding. Although all the animals featured are found in India, the text is not based on a specific traditional tale, but the intricate, deeply colored digital images, formed with many dots and geometric shapes, evoke kalamkari textile techniques.
With its short, rhythmic text and its rich, embellished, shiny pages with animals, flowers, and trees just waiting to be discovered, this is a reassuring yet inventive bedtime book. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911373-29-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lantana
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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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