A solid addition to the spring egg shelf
Writing for a younger audience than usual, Halfmann pares down the text, leaving a math/science book that will have readers counting, guessing and learning baby-animal names.
“Two eggs stuck together, / warmed by a furry tail in a tunnel by a stream. / Who will the babies be?” After guessing, readers can flip the gatefold to reveal, “2 platypus puggles, / with bills like ducks, slurping milk like kittens.” A clean design and predictable pattern help readers join in. Halfmann takes care to include animals from across the classes, featuring some old favorites such as penguins, monarch butterflies, robins, turtles, snakes and frogs, while also introducing some species that may be more unfamiliar to readers: glowworms, fish and ostriches. While rhyming verses might have better suited the pictures, subject matter and intended audience, Halfmann does well without it, using strong, descriptive words that might have been sacrificed in a rhyming text. For her picture-book debut, Thompson plays up the nature theme by using richly textured papers and fabrics to fashion her cut-paper collages. While her shapes and outlines are quite simple, their textures are anything but plain, adding another whole dimension to the artwork. A final page displays all of the eggs and their approximate sizes in relation to one another.
A solid addition to the spring egg shelf . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60905-191-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Apple
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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