A weak sequel run off literally by the numbers, with pretty but sometimes unsettling pictures.
A fox frets that an old friend and a new one will shut him out if he introduces them in this follow-up to Before We Sleep (2021).
Having made friends with Brock the badger over the winter, Little Red can hardly wait for his longtime bestie Hazel the dormouse to come out of hibernation so that all three of them can play together. By the time Hazel emerges from her teapot home, Little Red has had second thoughts. But when his strenuous efforts to keep the two apart come to naught, Hazel laughingly reassures him that she’s not going to throw him over. Neither will Brock, as it turns out, and so all three gambol off—or, as Volpe puts it: “One, two, three, and they all started playing together, just as friends do.” Sprays of lovely flowers and greenery give Proietti’s misty, rolling woodland settings a sunlit, beguiling serenity…but along with, oddly, outfitting Hazel with trousers while leaving the other two animals au naturel, the artist cuts abruptly from spring to autumn with a page turn and finishes with an isolated view of Little Red looking disturbingly like he’s about to pounce on, say, a juicy dormouse. Next to the previous outing’s sensitive exploration of both the close relationship between Hazel and Little Red and the emotional stress of being separated (by impending winter), this all comes off as a mix of confusing visual missteps tied to a perfunctory bit of relationship chess. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A weak sequel run off literally by the numbers, with pretty but sometimes unsettling pictures. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63655-028-2
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Red Comet Press
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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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