Slumber and science in harmonious combination, equally suitable for bedtime reading or for sharing with wakeful groups.
A cozy combination of restful rhymes, natural history notes and close-up pictures of snoozing creatures.
Meyer’s verse gets ahead of itself in the first stanza—“The sun has set; the sky is dark. / Bright stars shine in the night. / It’s time to rest, to dream sweet dreams, / then wake with morning’s light”—and elsewhere favors sound over sense, but despite these small miscues, its gently rhythmic measures create a properly soporific tone for this look at animal downtimes. As the prose commentary accompanying each of the 14 rhymed entries makes clear, sleeping patterns vary widely, and scientists are often hard put to find them at all: Horses and giraffes tend to take only short naps; grizzly bears can fall into a long sleep that resembles hibernation; dolphins and mallards rest half their brains at a time; fish rest but may not truly sleep. Other animals presented include koalas, owls, flamingos, brown bats, giant anteaters, magnificent frigatebirds, black-tailed prairie dogs and walruses. Meyer nonetheless bids all the chosen creatures “Sweet dreams,” and Caple depicts them in accurate detail and quiet settings yawning (where appropriate) or posed fetchingly with younglings.
Slumber and science in harmonious combination, equally suitable for bedtime reading or for sharing with wakeful groups. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87842-637-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Mountain Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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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