When Webster the stork, charged with delivering babies west of New York, has a head-on collision with a hot-air balloon, his brains get scrambled. He starts delivering his precious parcels so thoroughly wrong that he could easily get a job at the postal service: The sharks get a chicken, the giraffes a hippo, the spiders a monkey, the frogs an elephant. No worry, as the Ribberts make clear: “He’s not like the rest of the frogs that we know, / but Honey, he’s ours, and we’ll cherish him so.” Much of the reason this rhymed, topsy-turvy saga feels honest and natural is that Olson’s verse is never forced. Each word has a purpose, be it sheer entertainment or a an enticement to the imagination: “His ears were as big as a ship’s flapping sails, / and his skin was as gray as rain clouds and nails.” Munsinger’s artwork is winsome and tactile—you want to grab the hippos’ great fleshy snouts and give them a good squeeze. Arching over the whole muddle is the security of unconditional love. Hence, the next time young readers behave like rogue elephants in a family of damselflies, they will understand that such things happen and no one’s going to be thrown from the nest. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7910-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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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