A charming, challenging, humorous early reader that invites participation.
What might emerge from that strange egg?
Rex, a warthog, and Oslo, a small brown bird, find an egg. They know it must be an egg because, as Rex points out, it is “white and shaped like an egg!” Could the egg belong to a bird? A turtle? A fish? Rex and Oslo consider a whole list of animals that lay eggs. Some are unexpected (“Maybe it is a platypus egg”), some are scary (“I am afraid of crocodiles!”), and others are, hopefully, extinct (“Yikes!” says Oslo on learning that carnivorous dinosaurs laid eggs). With a new guess on each page, there’s plenty of opportunity for readers to think of what else might lay eggs. Simple, cartoonish art is enlivened by mixed-media touches: Rex’s body has a beautiful, touchable-looking gray roughness, the earth beneath their feet is represented by what appears to be photographs of soil, and the dinosaurs imagined by the duo have a lovely, subtle texture. A few of the hypothetical egg-layers are illustrated in a distinct, more realistic style. Some words are likely to be a stretch for beginning readers, but they are funny or interesting—platypus, squishy, extinct—making the difficult vocabulary its own reward. A comic conclusion gives the whole story one more gentle chuckle.
A charming, challenging, humorous early reader that invites participation. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781665926515
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon Spotlight
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
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