As colorful and raucous a collection of animals as ever was.
Readers learn the collective nouns for groups of animals in this picture book.
Rollicking rhymes introduce each group: “A parliament of owls was the first to arrive. / They perched in a tree up high. / A tower of giraffes glided in next, / their heads nearly touching the sky.” A light-skinned child with a cloud of red hair sits in a tree clutching a camera, but readers will only learn the reason for the gathering at the end. Animals from all habitats, from earth, sky, and water, all answer the call of this child: a prickle of porcupines, a barrel of monkeys, a cauldron of bats, a raft of otters, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a shiver of sharks, and even a culture of bacteria are among them. And what to call this final huge group of diverse animals? The child has the perfect collective noun. The jaunty rhymes briefly lose their way, turning more toward a list and losing a bit of the bouncy rhythm. The cartoon animals ham it up, many times exhibiting anthropomorphic behavior (one crow surveys the reader murderously, some pandas walk on two legs, and the dazzle of zebras almost look like they are in a conga line). While unrealistic in the animal world, the ending could speak to an ideal for the human world to aspire to, especially in our current times. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
As colorful and raucous a collection of animals as ever was. (Informational picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: July 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-53411-144-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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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