HORSE MEETS DOG

Name: HORSE MEETS DOG
Author: Elliott Kalan
ISBN: 978-0-06-279110-8

by Elliott Kalan ; illustrated by Tim Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 30, 2018

Animals so familiar and often so beloved to children start and end their conversation in bewilderment, which may lead to the...

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An interspecies encounter confuses two four-legged creatures.

Dog meets Horse and extols dogginess. Horse, in return, applauds horsiness. Dog likes to play fetch with a ball, while Horse loves to groom its mane. Neither can grasp that the other is a member of a different species. Horse expresses confusion at Dog’s small stature, and Dog, in turn, cannot understand how Horse can be so tall. They butt heads in their shared state of confusion, sure to increase exponentially when, on the final two pages, Bird flies into the picture. Kalan tells his little tale entirely in speech bubbles, with uppercase type used to express the animals’ raised voices. Miller’s illustrations are executed in pen and ink and “digital hocus-pocus.” They portray critters with sharp angles and exaggerated heads against a green lower background (for grass) and a blue upper background (for sky). Horse is gray and Dog is yellow; both are outlined in black with very big eyes. Some humorous moments grace the story, as when Horse tries to feed “Tiny Baby” Dog with a hay-filled bottle and gifts him with a size-appropriate saddle. However, an ending with mutual understanding and a blossoming friendship is absent.

Animals so familiar and often so beloved to children start and end their conversation in bewilderment, which may lead to the same feeling among listeners. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279110-8

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

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SHARKO AND HIPPO
by Elliott Kalan ; illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi

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WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?

by Sam McBratney ; illustrated by Anita Jeram ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2020

Readers are likely to love it to the moon and back.

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Little Nutbrown Hare ventures out into the wide world and comes back with a new companion in this sequel to Guess How Much I Love You (1994).

Big Nutbrown Hare is too busy, so after asking permission, Little Nutbrown Hare scampers off over the rolling meadow to play by himself. After discovering that neither his shadow nor his reflection make satisfactory playmates (“You’re only another me!”), Little Nutbrown comes to Cloudy Mountain…and meets “Someone real!” It’s a white bunny who introduces herself as Tipps. But a wonderful round of digging and building and chasing about reaches an unexpected end with a game of hide-and-seek, because both hares hide! After waiting a long time to be found, Little Nutbrown Hare hops on home in disappointment, wondering whether he’ll ever see Tipps again. As it turns out, it doesn’t take long to find out, since she has followed him. “Now, where on earth did she come from?” wonders Big Nutbrown. “Her name is Tipps,” Little Nutbrown proudly replies, “and she’s my friend.” Jeram’s spacious, pale-toned, naturalistic outdoor scenes create a properly idyllic setting for this cozy development in a tender child-caregiver relationship—which hasn’t lost a bit of its appealing intimacy in the more than 25 years since its first appearance. As in the first, Big Nutbrown Hare is ungendered, facilitating pleasingly flexible readings.

Readers are likely to love it to the moon and back. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5362-1747-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

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MINDI AND THE GOOSE NO ONE ELSE COULD SEE
by Sam McBratney ; illustrated by Linda Ólafsdóttir

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ONE MORE TICKLE!
by Sam McBratney ; illustrated by Anita Jeram

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LOOK WHAT I CAN DO
by Sam McBratney ; illustrated by Anita Jeram

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Children’s Author Sam McBratney Dies at 77

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I NEED A HUG

by Aaron Blabey ; illustrated by Aaron Blabey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 29, 2019

This is a tremendously moving story, but some people will be moved only on the second reading, after they’ve Googled “How to...

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A hug shouldn’t require an instruction manual—but some do.

A porcupine can frighten even the largest animal. In this picture book, a bear and a deer, along with a small rabbit, each run away when they hear eight simple words and their name: “I need a hug. Will you cuddle me,…?” As they flee, each utters a definitive refusal that rhymes with their name. The repetitive structure gives Blabey plenty of opportunities for humor, because every animal responds to the question with an outlandish, pop-eyed expression of panic. But the understated moments are even funnier. Each animal takes a moment to think over the request, and the drawings are nuanced enough that readers can see the creatures react with slowly building anxiety or, sometimes, a glassy stare. These silent reaction shots not only show exquisite comic timing, but they make the rhymes in the text feel pleasingly subtle by delaying the final line in each stanza. The story is a sort of fable about tolerance. It turns out that a porcupine can give a perfectly adequate hug when its quills are flat and relaxed, but no one stays around long enough to find out except for an animal that has its own experiences with intolerance: a snake. It’s an apt, touching moral, but the climax may confuse some readers as they try to figure out the precise mechanics of the embrace.

This is a tremendously moving story, but some people will be moved only on the second reading, after they’ve Googled “How to pet a porcupine.” (Picture book. 3-5)