The aesthetic pleasures are very strong, but one-on-one adult guidance will be necessary to help young mathematicians make...
Exquisite watercolor-and–gold-leaf paintings of animals and objects that look as if they tumbled out of medieval illuminated manuscripts distinguish this counting book.
The book starts off simply enough: “One cherry, one cheetah.” A background of textured gold and bluish-purple, embellished with biomorphic designs, completes the spread. Two regal dogs appear, with “two balls, one big, one small.” “Three bears, three bowls, three silver spoons” follow, but why are there just three berries to go along with “four fine foxes, sharing strawberries.” The seven giant pandas have only five parasols. Then the book really breaks the mold. Now there are “Ten cherries, one cheetah.” Those dark red, glistening cherries look good enough to eat; the last page shows the sated cheetah, with 10 cherry pits neatly lined up, and the text reads: “No cherries, one cheetah. / None, all gone.” But the cheetah is still here. The front endpapers display unordered floating numerals (1 through 10), the cheetah, and the cherry, but no other numerals appear until the end. A chart showing the numerals and the associated flora or fauna (with cherry but sans cheetah) is found on the back endpapers. These pictures differ slightly from the inside pages, and sometimes the attendant objects are omitted.
The aesthetic pleasures are very strong, but one-on-one adult guidance will be necessary to help young mathematicians make sense of these complex images. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-91095-928-2
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Otter-Barry
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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