A short, sweet tale introducing the concept of snow while celebrating the small joys of life in imaginative and joyful...
A Ladybug Girl adventure for her littlest fans, this one features a romp in the snow.
The flakes have started to fall, so Ladybug Girl has to bundle up before heading out to play. Her trusty basset hound brings over her boots, and she pulls on a big red coat before donning tutu, wings, antennae and ear muffs. In full Ladybug Girl gear, she ventures into the snowy world with Bingo, tasting the fluffy stuff, building it into a mound and, finally, making a snow animal. What animal, you ask? “A snow Bingo!” of course! Both text and illustrations are appropriately spare. Simple backgrounds place the emphasis on the antics and emotions of Ladybug Girl and her devoted companion. For example, as she works with Bingo to pile the snow into a mound, Ladybug Girl looks nothing if not determined, with her tongue poking out of her mouth in an expression of concentration and effort, and once the snow Bingo is built, she looks like the picture of victory with her arms way up over her head as Bingo celebrates beside her.
A short, sweet tale introducing the concept of snow while celebrating the small joys of life in imaginative and joyful Ladybug Girl style. (Board book. 2-5)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4137-9
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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