An outing to which children (like Peter’s cousin Benjamin Bunny) will listen with “particular attention,” done up in a...
Showing his age not a whit, nor having lost his appetite, Peter Rabbit eats his way into a pair of (metaphorical) pickles in this droll comeback.
Idly wishing for a change of scenery, Peter falls asleep in the McGregors’ picnic basket—after polishing off a sandwich that’s as big as he is—and wakes up in the far-off Scottish Highlands. Thompson (who also often wakes up in Scotland) doesn’t leave him at loose ends for long, though. Rescued by kilted cousin Finlay McBurney, he spends a cozy night atop a sack of “sheepswool and heather.” The next day he attends a rabbit Highland games (“very boring”) before enjoying a further gustatory encounter with an “unusually large RADISH” hidden behind a “Keep Out” sign. At last he makes his way back home with a “fat little haggis for his mother.” Looking something like a fat little haggis himself and still clad in his customary torn blue jacket, Peter draws the eye in each of Taylor’s verdant, loosely brushed watercolors. Most of the action plays out in the text, but, rendered in Beatrix Potter’s general style with a paler palette and less dramatic tension, the pictures nonetheless create pretty, idyllic tableaus of wildflowers, tartans and dappled greenery.
An outing to which children (like Peter’s cousin Benjamin Bunny) will listen with “particular attention,” done up in a large, decidedly un-Potter-like trim size that’s suitable for sharing in a lap or with a group. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-72326-710-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Warne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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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