Overstuffed and not entirely successful, this follow-up is nonetheless fun and entertaining.
This return visit to Happy County following series opener Hello, World! (2020) includes informational sections along with brief narratives, search-and-find challenges, lots of labels, and many visual jokes.
Once again there are 18 chapters, mostly two pages each. The action takes place over two days and two nights with the Sun and the Moon depicted in both factual and fanciful fashion. Small stories feature a grandmother’s visit, a filmmaker’s frustration, a hot air balloon mishap (solved with ingenuity by the Bright Brothers), an entrepreneurial snake gardener, and a backyard campout. Sections between the stories provide basic facts, with varying success, about the water cycle, photosynthesis, the phases (or “faces”) of the moon, tides, planets, and solar power. In addition to feeling slightly arbitrary despite their ties to the moon and sun, these informational sections are generally too brief to be truly informative, most obviously in the explanation of low and high tides. Occasionally awkward phrasing further weakens the overall appeal. Despite these flaws, there is plenty to like about Long’s busy artwork and the (mostly) anthropomorphic animals that populate his cheery community. Luckily, the format lends itself to reading sections independently as well as sequentially. Fans of the first book will be amused by spotting Farmer Del, still chasing L’il Beaky, on some spreads while readers new and old will enjoy catching the clever puns and learning a wide variety of vocabulary words. (This book was reviewed digitally with 12-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Overstuffed and not entirely successful, this follow-up is nonetheless fun and entertaining. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19174-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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